Leibbursch, as he is called, from among the older men, whose special
care it is, to see to it that he behaves himself properly in his new
environment; he pledges himself to respect the traditions and
standards of the corps, and to keep himself worthy of respect among
his fellows, and among those whom he meets outside. A companionship
and guardianship not unlike this, used to exist in the Greek-letter
society to which I once belonged. He of course abides by the rules and
regulations of the order. It is a time of freedom in one sense, but it
is a freedom closely guarded, and there is rigid discipline here as in
practically all other departments of life in Germany.
The young students, or Fuechse, as they are called, are instructed in
the way they should go by the older students, or Burschen, whose
authority is absolute. This authority extends even to the people whom
they may know and consort with, either in the university or in the
town, and to all questions of personal behavior, debts, dissipation,
manners, and general bearing. In many of the corps there are high
standards and old traditions as regards these matters, and every
member must abide by them. Every corps student is a patriot, ready to
sing or fight for Kaiser and Vaterland, and socialism, even criticism
of his country or its rulers, are as out of place among them as in the
army or navy. They are particular as to the men whom they admit, and a
man's lineage and bearing and relations with older members of the
corps are carefully canvassed before he is admitted to membership.
Both the present Emperor and one of his sons have been members of a
corps.
Let us spend a day with them. It is Saturday. We get up rather late,
having turned in late after the Commers of Friday, when the men who
are to fight the next day were drunk to, sung to, and wished good
fortune on the morrow, and sent home early. The trees are turning
green at Bonn, the shrubs are feeling the air with hesitating
blossoms, you walk out into the sunshine as gay as a lark, for the
champagne and the beer of the night before were good, and you sang
away the fumes of alcohol before you went to bed. There was much
laughter, and a speech or two of welcome for the guest, responded to
at 1 A. M. in German, French, English, and gestures with a beer-mug,
and punctuated with the appreciative comments of the company.
It was a time to slough off twenty years or so and let Adam have his
chance, and the company was of gentlemen who sympathize with and
understand the "Alter Herr," and are only too delighted if he will let
the springs of youth bubble and sparkle for them, and glad to
encourage him to return to reminiscences of his prowess in love and
war, and ready to pledge him in bumper after bumper success in the
days to come. You might think it a carouse. Far from it.
The ceremony is presided over by a stern young gentleman, who never
for a moment allows any member of the company to get out of hand, and
who, when a speech is to be made, makes it with grace and complete
ease of manner. Indeed, these young fellows surprise one with their
easy mastery of the art of speech-making. Even the spokesman for the
Fuechse, or younger students, at the lower end of the table, rises and
pledges himself and his companions in a few graceful words, with
certain sly references to the possibility that the guest may not have
lost his appreciation of the charms of German womankind, which the
guest in question here and now, and frankly admits; but not a word of
coarseness, not a hint that totters on the brink of an indiscretion,
and what higher praise can one give to speech-making on such an
occasion!
My particular host and introducer to his old corps is youngest of all,
and though seemingly as lavish in his potations as any one, sings his
way home with me, head as clear, legs as steady, eyes as bright, as
though it were 10 A. M. and not 2 A. M., and as though I had not
seemed to see his face during most of the evening through the bottom
of a beer-mug.
That was the night before. The next morning we stroll over to the room
where the Schlaeger contests are to take place. It is packed with
students in their different-colored caps. Beer there is, of course,
but no smoking allowed till the bouts are over.
I go down to see the men dressing for the fray. They strip to the
waist, put on a loose half-shirt half-jacket of cotton stuff, then a
heavily padded half-jerkin that covers them completely from chin to
knee. The throat is wrapped round and round with heavy silk bandages.
The right arm and hand are guarded with a glove and a heavily padded
leather sleeve; all these impervious to any sword blow. The eyes are
guarded with steel spectacle frames fitted with thick glass. Nothing
is exposed but the face and the top of the head. The exposed parts are
washed with antiseptics, as are also the swords, repeatedly during the
bout. The sword, hilt and blade together, measures one hundred and
five centimetres. There is a heavy, well-guarded hilt, and a pliable
blade with a square end, sharp as a razor on both edges for some six
inches from the end.
The position in the sword-play is to face squarely one's opponent, the
sword hand well over the head with the blade held down over the left
shoulder. The distance between the combatants is measured by placing
the swords between them lengthwise, each one with his chest against
the hilt of his own weapon, and this marks the proper distance between
them. When they are brought in and face one another, the umpire, with
a bow, explains the situation. The two seconds with swords crouch each
beside his man, ready to throw up the swords and stop the fighting
between each bout. Two other men stand ready to hold the rather
heavily weighted sword arm of their comrade on the shoulder during the
pauses. Two others with cotton dipped in an antiseptic preparation
keep the points of the swords clean. Still another official keeps a
record in a book, of each cut or scratch, the length of time, the
number of bouts, and the result. The doctor decides when a wound is
bad enough to close the contest.
At the word "Los!" the blades sing and whistle in the air, the work
being done almost wholly with the wrist, some four blows are
exchanged, there is a pause, then at it again, till the allotted
number of bouts are over, or one or the other has been cut to the
point where the doctor decides that there shall be no more. We follow
them downstairs again, where, after being carefully washed, the
combatants are seated in a chair one after the other, their friends
crowd around and count the stitches as the surgeon works, and comment
upon what particular twist of the wrist produced such and such a gash.
I have seen scores of these contests, and during the last year as many
as a dozen or more. There is no record of any one ever having been
seriously injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more men injured
by too much beer than too much sword-play.
It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player should sneer at bull-
fighting; the boxer at fencing; the rider to hounds at these Schlaeger
bouts; and that we game-players should say contemptuous things of the
contests of our neighbors. Personally, if one could eliminate the horse
from the contest, I go so far as to believe that even bull-fighting is
better than no game at all. As for these Schlaeger contests, they seem to
me no more brutal than our own foot-ball, which is only brutal to the
shivering crowd of the too tender who have never played it, and not so
dangerous as polo or pig-sticking, and a thousand times better than no
contest at all.
I am not of those who believe that the human body and that human life
are the most precious and valuable things in the world. They are only
servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls that ought to be
their masters. Without training, without obedience, without the
instant willingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the
human body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. I claim that
it braces the mind to expose the body; that an education in the
prepared emergencies of games and sport, is the best training for the
unprepared emergencies with which life is strewn.
The most cruel people I have ever known were gentle enough physically,
but they were hard and sour in their social relations, and often
enough called "good" by their fellows. The disappointments, losses,
sorrows, defeats, of each one of us, trouble, even though
imperceptibly, the waters of life that we all must drink of; and to
ignore or to rejoice at these misfortunes is only muddying what we
ourselves must drink. I believe the hardening of the body goes some
way toward softening the heart and cleansing the soul, and toward
fitting a man with that cheerful charity that supplies the oil of
intercourse in a creaking world of rival interests.
To see a youth swinging a sword at his fellow's face with delighted
energy; to see a man riding off vigorously at polo; to see a man hard
at it with the gloves on; to see another flinging himself and his
horse over a wall or across a ditch; to see a man taking his nerves in
hand, to make a two-yard put for a half, when he is one down and two
to play; to see these things without seeing that -- perhaps often
enough in a muddy sort of way -- the soul is making a slave of the
body, that courage is mastering cowardice, that in an elementary way
the youth is learning how to give himself generously when some great
emergency calls upon him to give his life for an ideal, a tradition, a
duty, is to see nothing but brutality, I admit. Who does not know that
the Carthaginians at Cannae were one thing, the Carthaginians at Capua
another! I have therefore no acidulous effeminacy to pour upon these
German Schlaeger bouts. I prefer other forms of exercise, but I am a
hardened believer in the manhood bred of contests, and though their
ways are not my ways, I prefer a world of slashed faces to a world of
soft ones.
Prosit, gentlemen! Better your world than the world of
Semitic haggling and exchange; of caution and smoothness; of the
disasters born of daintiness; of sliding over the ship's side in
women's clothes to live, when it was a moral duty to be drowned.
Better your world than any such worlds as those, for
"If one should dream that such a world began
In some slow devil's heart that hated man,
Who should deny it?"
Milton held that "a complete and generous education fits a man to
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both
private and public, of peace and war." It is my opinion that the
Schlaeger has its part to play in this matter of education. A mind
trained to the keenness of a razor's edge, but without a sound body
controlled by a steel will, is of small account in the world. The
whole aim of education is, after all, to make a man independent, to
make the intelligence reach out in keen quest of its object, and at
its own and not at another's bidding. An education is intended to make
a man his own master, and so far as any man is not his own master, in
just so far is he uneducated. What he knows, or does not know, of
books does not alter the fact.
Much of the pharisaism and priggishness
on the subject of education arises from the fact that the world is
divided into two camps as regards knowledge: those who believe that
the astronomer alone knows the stars, and those who believe that he
knows them best who sleeps in the open beneath them. In reality,
neither type of mind is complete without the other.
To turn from any
theoretical discussion of the subject, it remains to be said that
Germany has trained her whole population into the best working team in
the world. Without the natural advantages of either England or America
she has become the rival of both. Her superior mental training has
enabled her to wrest wealth from by-products, and she saves and grows
rich on what America wastes. Whether Germany has succeeded in giving
the ply of character to her youth, as she folds them in her
educational factories, I sometimes doubt. That she has not made them
independent and ready to grapple with new situations, and strange
peoples, and swift emergencies, their own past and present history
shows.
It is a very strenuous and economical existence, however, for
everybody, and it requires a politically tame population to be thus
driven. The dangerous geographical situation of Germany, ringed round
by enemies, has made submission to hard work, and to an iron
autocratic government necessary. To be a nation at all it was
necessary to obey and to submit, to sacrifice and to save. These
things they have been taught as have no other European people. Greater
wealth, increased power, a larger role in the world, are bringing new
problems. Education thus far has been in the direction of fitting each
one into his place in a great machine, and less attention has been
paid to the development of that elasticity of mind which makes for
independence; but men educate themselves into independence, and that
time is coming swiftly for Germany.
"Also he hath set the world in their heart," and one wonders what this
population, hitherto so amenable, so economical, and so little
worldly, will do with this new world. The temptations of wealth, the
sirens of luxury, the opportunities for amusement and dissipation, are
all to the fore in the Germany of to-day as they were certainly not
twenty-five years ago. Ulysses, alas, does not bind himself to the
mast very tightly as he passes these enchanted isles of modern luxury.
"The land of damned professors" has learned its lessons from those
same professors so well, that it is now ready to take a postgraduate
course in world politics; and as I said in the beginning, some of our
friends are putting the word "damned" in other parts of this, and
other sentences, when they describe the rival prowess and progress of
the Germans.
VII THE DISTAFF SIDE
Madame Necker writes of women: "Les femmes tiennent la place de ces
lagers duvets qu'on introduit dans les caisses de porcelaine; on n'y
fait point d'attention, mais si on les retire, tout se brise."
When one sees women and dogs harnessed together dragging carts about
the streets; when one sees women doing the lighter work of sweeping up
leaves and collecting rubbish in the forests and on the larger
estates; doing the gardening work in Saxony and other places; when one
sees them by the hundreds working bare-legged in the beet-fields in
Silesia and elsewhere throughout Germany; when one reads "Viele Weiber
sind gut weil sie nicht wissen wie man es machen muss um boese zu
sein," and "Der Mann nach Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach Sitte," two
phrases from the German classics, Lessing and Goethe; when one recalls
the shameless carelessness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of how
his love-poems were sometimes sent by the same mail to the lady and to
the press; and the unrestrained worship of Goethe by the German women
of his day; when one sees time and time again all over Germany the
women shouldered into the street while the men keep to the sidewalk;
when one sees in the streets, railway carriages, and other public
conveyances, the insulting staring to which every woman is subjected
if she have a trace of good looks, one realizes that at any rate
Madame Necker was not writing of German women. Let me add that so far
as the great Goethe is concerned, it is by no Puritan yard-stick that
I am measuring him, but by the German's own high standard which
despises any mating of true sentiment with commercialism. "Beatus ille
qui procul negotiis," certainly applies to one's affairs of the heart.
In the gallery at Dresden, where the loveliest mother's face in all
the world shines down upon you from Raphael's canvas like a
benediction, there is a small picture by Rubens, "The Judgment of
Paris." The three goddesses--induitur formosa est; exuitur ipsa forma
est --have taken literally the compliment paid to a certain beautiful
customer by a renowned French dressmaker: "Un rien et madame est
habillee!" They are coquettishly revealing their claims to the
Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his hand. Paris and his friend are
in the most nonchalant of attitudes. They could not be more
indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were they dandies judging
the class for costermonger's donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The
three most beautiful women in the world are squirming and posturing
for praise, and a decision, before two as sophisticated and self-satisfied
men as one will ever see on canvas or off it.
The same subject is treated by a man of the same breed, but of a later
day, named Feuerbach, and his picture hangs, I think, in Breslau. Here
again the supersuperiority of the male is portrayed.
In the Church of Saint Sebaldus at Nuremberg, there is a delightful
mural painting which makes one merry even to recall it. The subject is
the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are being lectured by an elderly man
in flowing robes with a long white beard. His beard alone would more
than supply Adam and Eve with the covering they lack. In an easy
attitude, with neither haste nor anxiety, he is pointing out to them
the error of their ways. He is as detached in manner as though he were
Professor Wundt, lecturing to us at Leipsic on the fourth dimension of
space. Adam is somewhat dejected and reclines upon the ground. Eve,
unabashed, with nothing on but the apple which she is munching, is
evidently in a reckless mood. She looks like a child of fifteen, with
her hair down her back; the defiance of her attitude is that of a
naughty little girl. The world-old problem is under discussion, but
with an air of good humor and cheerfulness on the part of the
lecturer, as though there were still time in the world, as though
hurry were an undiscovered human attribute, as though possibly the
world would still go on even if the problem were left unsolved, and
this first leafy parliament adjourned sine die.
They were so much wiser than are we! They knew then that there would
be other sessions of congress, and that it was not necessary to decide
everything on that spring day of the year One. But here again in this
picture it is the male attitude toward the woman that is of chief
interest. Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has broken into the
sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger fool, he seems to
say. As for the professor in the red robes, his easy, patronizing
manner is indicative enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the
woman question. You can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard:
"Kueche, Kinder, Kirche!"
From the fields of Silesia, where the beet industry is possible only
because there are hundreds of bare-legged girls and women to single
the beets, a process not possible by machinery, at a wage of from
twenty-five to thirty cents a day, to these German paintings with
their illustrations of the spiritual and moral attitude of the German
man toward the German woman, one sees everywhere and among practically
all classes an attitude of condescension toward women among the polite
and polished; an attitude of carelessness bordering on contempt among
the rude. Their attitude is like that of the Jews who cry in their
synagogues, "Thank God for not having made me a woman!"
One can judge, not incorrectly, of the status of women in a country by
the manners and habits of the men, entirely dissociated from their
relations to women. When one sees men equipped with small mirrors and
small brushes and combs, which they use in all sorts of public places,
even in the streets, in the street-cars, in omnibuses, and in the
theatres; when one opens the door to a knock to find a gentleman, a
small mirror in one hand and a tiny brush in the other, preparing
himself for his entrance into your hotel sitting-room; you are bound
to think that these persons are in the childhood days of personal
hygiene, as it cannot be denied that they are, but also that their
women folk must be still in the Eryops age of social sophistication,
not to put a stop to such bucolic methods of grooming. Even though the
Eryops is a gigantic tadpole, a hundred times older than the oldest
remains of man, this is hardly an exaggeration.
In no other country in
the cultured group of nations is the animal man so naively vain, so
deliciously self-conscious, so untrained in the ways of the polite
world, so serenely oblivious, not merely of the rights of women but of
the simple courtesy of the strong to the weak. It is the only country
I have visited where the hands of the men are better cared for than
the hands of the women; and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the
question of who does the rough work, and who has the vanity and who
the leisure for a meticulous toilet. One must not forget that regular
and systematic cleansing of the person is a very modern fashion. As
late as the early part of the nineteenth century, tooth-brushes were
not allowed in certain French convents, being looked upon as a luxury.
Cleanliness was not very common a century and a half ago in any
country. In 1770 the publication of Monsieur Perrel's "Pogonotomie, ou
1'Art d'apprendre a se raser soi-meme," created a sensation among
fashionable people, and enthusiasts studied self-shaving. The author
of "Lois de la Galanterie" in 1640 writes: "Every day one should take
pains to wash one's hands, and one should also wash one's face almost
as often!"
The copious streams of hot and cold water, turned into a porcelain tub
at any time of the day or night; the brushes, and soaps, and towels,
and toilet waters, and powders of our day were quite unknown to our
not far-off ancestors. The oft-repeated and minute ablutions of our
day are almost as modern as bicycles, and not as ancient as the
railways. The Germans are only a little behind the rest of us in this
soap and water cult, that is all.
In the streets and public conveyances of the cities, in the beer-gardens
and restaurants in the country, in the summer and winter
resorts from the Baltic to the Black Forest, from the Rhine to
Bohemia, it is ever the same. They seat themselves at table first, and
have their napkins hanging below their Adam's apples before their
women are in their chairs; hundreds of times have I seen their women
arrive at table after they were seated, not a dozen times have I seen
their masters rise to receive them; their preference for the inside of
the sidewalk is practically universal; even officers in uniform, but
this is of rare occurrence, will take their places in a railway
carriage, all of them smoking, where two ladies are sitting, and wait
till requested before throwing their cigars away, and what cigars! and
then by smiles and innuendoes make the ladies so uncomfortable that
they are driven from the carriage. Even eleven hundred years ago the
German woman had rather a rough time of it. Charlemagne had nine
wives, but he seems to have been unduly uxorious or unwearying in his
infatuations. He made the wife travel with him, and all nine of them
died, worn out by travel and hardship. There is a constancy of
companionship which is deadly.
The inconveniences and discomfort of going about alone, for ladies in
Germany, I have heard not from a dozen, but in a chorus from German
ladies themselves. I am reciting no grievances of my compatriots, for
I have seen next to nothing of Americans for a year or more, and I
have no personal complaints, for these soft adventurers scent danger
quickly, and give the masters of the world, whether male or female, a
wide berth.
These gross manners are the result of two factors in German life that
it is well to keep in mind. They are a poor people, only just emerging
from poverty, slavery, and disaster; poor not only in possessions, but
poor in the experience of how to use them. They do not know how to use
their new freedom. They are as awkward in this new world of theirs, of
greater wealth and opportunity, as unyoked oxen that have strayed into
city streets. The abject deference of the women, who know nothing
better than these parochial masters, adds to their sense of their own
importance. It is largely the women themselves who make their men
insupportable.