is a series of going to pieces the moment the strong hand of authority
is taken away from them. The German, and especially the Prussian
policeman, has become the greatest official busybody in the world. No
German's house is his castle. The policeman enters at will and, backed
by the authorities, questions the householder about his religion, his
servants, the attendance of his children at school, the status of the
guests staying in his house, and about many other matters besides. If
one of his children by reason of ill health is taught at home, the
authorities demand the right to send an inspector every six months to
examine him or her, to be sure that the child is properly taught. The
policeman is in attendance on the platform at every public meeting,
armed with authority to close the meeting if either speeches or
discussion seem to him unpatriotic, unlawful, or strife-breeding.
Professors, pastors, teachers are all muzzled by the state, and must
preach and teach the state orthodoxy or go! A young professor of
political economy in Berlin only lately was warned, and has become
strangely silent since.
The de-Germanizing of the German abroad is in line with this, and a
constant source of annoyance to the powers that be. Buda-Pesth was
founded by Germans in 1241, and now not one-tenth of the population is
German. As the Franks became French, as the Long Beards became
Italians, so the Germans become Americans in America, English in
England, Austrian and Bohemian in Austria and Bohemia. It has been a
problem to prevent their becoming Poles where the state has settled
Germans for the distinct purpose of ousting the Poles.
In China, in South America, and even in Sumatra I have heard German
officials tell with indignation of how their compatriots rapidly take
the local color, and lose their German habits and customs and point of
view.
One of the half dozen best-known bankers in Berlin has lamented to me
that he must change his people in South America every few years, as
they soon go to pieces there. Army officers came home from China
indignant to find their compatriots there speaking English and
unwilling even to speak German. Even as long ago as the time of the
Thirty Years' War a forgotten chronicler, Adam Junghaus von der
Ohritz, writes: "Further, it is a misfortune to the Germans that they
take to imitating like monkeys and fools. As soon as they come among
other soldiers, they must have Spanish or other outlandish clothes. If
they could babble foreign languages a little, they would associate
themselves with Spaniards and Italians." Wilhelm von Polentz, in his
"das Land der Zukunft," writes: "die Deutsch-Amerikaner sind fuer die
alte Heimat dauernd verloren, politisch ganz und kulturell beinahe
vollstaendig."
Bismarck knew these people and the present Emperor knows these people,
better than do you and I! Bismarck even insisted upon using the German
text, and once returned a letter of congratulation from an official
body because it was written in the Latin text. Even the Great Elector
must have recognized this weakness when he said: "Gedenke dass du bist
em Deutscher!" The present Kaiser lends his whole social influence to
keep the Germans German. He will have the bill of fare in German, he
prefers the dreadful word Mundtuch to napkin. His officers very often
demand that the bill of fare in a German hotel shall be presented to
them in German and not in French. And they are quite right to do so,
and quite right to hang the German world with the sign "Verboten";
quite right to distribute titles and medals and orders, for the more
they are uniformed and decorated and ticketed and drilled, and taken
care of, the better they like it, and the more contented these people
are. Overorganization has brought this about. Their theories have
hardened into a veritable imprisonment of the will. They have drifted
away from Goethe's wise saying: "That man alone attains to life and
freedom who daily has to conquer them anew."
Let me refer again just here to the socialist propaganda, which seems
to the outsider so strong here in Germany. Even this is far flabbier
than it looks, as I have attempted to explain elsewhere. In such
strong and out-and-out industrial centres as Essen, Duisburg-Muehlheim,
Saarbruecken, and Bochum, where a vigorous fight has been made against
socialism, the following are the figures of the last election in 1912
when the socialists largely increased their vote throughout other
parts of Germany:
NATIONALLIBERAL ZENTRUM SOCIALDEMOKRAT
Essen............ 25,937 42,832 40,503
Duisburg-Muehlheim 33,934 31,559 34,187
Saarbruecken...... 25,108 24,228 4,157
Bochum........... 42,257 37,650 64,833
I cite this example because it seems as though the growth of socialism
in Germany were in direct contradiction to my argument that they are a
soft, an impressionable, an amenable, and easily led and governed
people.
State socialism as thus far put into practice in Germany is, in a
nutshell, the decision on the part of the state or the rulers that the
individual is not competent to spend his own money, to choose his own
calling, to use his own time as he will, or to provide himself for his
own future and for the various emergencies of life. And by the minute
state control, they are rapidly bringing the whole population to an
enfeebled social and political condition, where they can do nothing
for themselves.
They have been knocked about and dragooned by their own rulers and, be
it said and emphasized, they have received certain compensations and
gained certain advantages, if nothing else an orderliness, safety, and
care for the people by the state unequalled elsewhere in the world.
But there is no gainsaying, on the other hand, that they have lost the
fruits that are plucked by the nations of more individualistic
training.
They have clean streets, cheap music and drama, and a veritable mesh
of national education with interstices so small that no one can
escape, and they are coddled in every direction; but they have no
stuff for colonizers, and they have been not infrequently wofully
lacking in stalwart statesmen, and leaders.
To deprive the worker of his choice of expenditure, by taking all but
a pittance of it in taxation, is a dangerous deprivation of moral
exercise. To be able to choose for oneself is a vitally necessary
appliance in the moral gymnasium, even if here and there one chooses
wrong. It is a curious trend of thought of the day, which proposes to
cure social evils always by weakening, rather than by strengthening
the individual.
Socialism is merely a moral form of putting a sharper bit in
humanity's mouth; when of course the highest aim, the optimistic view,
is to train people to go as fast and straight and far as possible,
with the least possible hampering of their natural powers by
legislation. "Some men are by nature free, others slaves," writes
Aristotle, but whether this axiom can be accepted fully or not, it is
undoubtedly true that you can first dragoon and then coddle a whole
people, into a lack of independence and a shrinking from the
responsibilities of freedom.
We are drugging the people ourselves just now with legislation as a
cure for the evils of industrialism, but such legislation will only do
what soporifics can do, they numb the pain, but they never bring
health. What a forlorn philosophy it is! Men take advantage, rob and
steal, we say, and to do away with this we give up the fight for fair
play and orderliness and propose sweeping away all the prizes of life,
hoping thus to do away with the highwaymen of commerce and finance. If
there is no booty, there will be no bandit, we say, forgetting
altogether the corollary that if there are no prizes there will be no
prizemen! Neither God nor Nature gives anything to those who do not
struggle, and both God and Nature appoint the stern task-master,
Necessity, to see to it that we do struggle. Now come the ignorant and
the socialists, demanding that the state step in and roll back the
very laws of creation by supplying what is not earned from the surplus
of the strong. Who cannot see anarchy looming ahead of this programme,
for it is surely a lunatic negation of all the laws of God and Nature?
They do not seem to see either in America or in England that state
supervision carried too far leads straight to the sanction of all the
demands of socialism and syndicalism. Legislation was never intended
to be the father of a people, but their policeman. Overlegislation,
whether by an autocrat or a democratic state, leads straight to
revolution, to Caesarism, or to slavery.
In Germany the state by giving much has gained an appalling control
over the minute details of human intercourse. I am no philosophic
adviser to the rich; it is as the champion of the poor man that I
detest socialism and all its works, for in the end it only leads
backward to slavery. Every vote the workingman gives to a policy of
wider state control is another link for the chains that are meant for
his ankles, his wrists, and his neck. If the state is to take care of
me when I am sick or old or unemployed, it must necessarily deprive me
of my liberty when I am well and young and busy, and thus make my very
health a kind of sickness. A year in Germany ought to cure any
sensible workingman of the notion that the state is a better guardian
of his purse and his powers than he is himself. A distinguished German
publicist, criticising this overpowering interference of the state,
writes: "Mir ist wohl bewusst dass diese Gedanken einst weilen fromme
Wuensche bleiben werden: die Schatten laehmender Muedigkeit die fiber
unserer Politik lagern, lassen wenig Hoffnung auf froehliche
Initiative. Allein immer kann und wird es nicht so bleiben." And he
ends with the ominous words: "Reform oder Revolution!"
One often hears the apostles of a certain kittenish humanitarianism,
talking of the great good that would result if we in America would
provide light wines and beer and music, and parks and gardens, for our
people. They see the crowds of men and women and children flocking by
thousands to such resorts in Germany, where they eat tons of cakes and
Broedchens and jam, and where they drink gallons of beer and wine, and
where they sit hour after hour apparently quite content. Why, Lord
love you, ladies and gentlemen, our populace would never be content
with such mild amusements! Fancy "Silver Dollar" Sullivan or "Bath-house"
John attempting to cajole their cohorts in such fashion!
It may be a pity that our people are not thus easily amused, but, on
the other hand, it means simply that our energy, our vitality, our
national nervousness if you like, will not be so easily satisfied. Our
disorderly nervousness, or nervous disorderliness, though it has been
a tremendous asset in keeping us bounding along industrially and
commercially, and though it gives an exhilarating, champagne-like
flavor to our atmosphere, has cost us dear. If you will have freedom,
you will have those who are ruined by it; just as, if you will have
social and political servitude, you will have a stodgy, unindependent
populace.
Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homicidal crime suffers the
extreme penalty attaching to such crimes in America, and these
figures, I admit, are a shocking revelation of supine justice and
sentimental executive, as when politics can even bend our President to
grant silly pardons, with baleful results upon the doings of other
wealthy criminals. We use as large an amount of habit-forming drugs
per capita as is used in the Chinese empire, so says Dr. Wright, who
was commissioned by the State Department to gather facts on this
subject. We import and consume 500,000 pounds of opium yearly, when
70,000 pounds, including its derivatives and preparations, should
suffice for our medical needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000
ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured, and consumed, although
15,000 ounces would supply every legitimate need. America collected
$340,000,000 from tariff taxes in 1911, and $40,000,000 of this from
tobacco and alcoholics.
My readers may look back to the title of this chapter and ask: What
has all this to do with the status of women in Germany? I have told
you in these few pages the whole secret. The men are not independent;
what can you expect of the women! The men have, until very lately, had
no surplus wealth or leisure, and have now, to all appearance, little
surplus vitality or energy. Germany is getting to be a very tired-looking
nation. One hears almost as little laughter in Germany as in
India. Gayety and laughter are the bubbles and foam on the glass of
life, proving that it is charged with energy. Do not believe me,
although I have carefully watched many thousands of Germans in all
parts of Germany taking their pleasure and their ease; come over and
see for yourself! These thousands at their simple recreations are not
gay. I grant the dangers we run by the opposite policy, but these are
the results we have to fear from the German methods.
It is the men who
must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background
for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they
are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not
do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them
say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them
abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to
spend, and more of luxury than is good for them; and all too many of
the underbred among them paint and bejewel and begown themselves to
imitate the lecherous barbarism of the too free. But one of the
greatest ladies in Germany tells me, "I am never so flattered as when
I am taken for an American!" I can pay her no handsomer compliment
than to reply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our women revive the
drooping dukedoms of England, and few will maintain that some of them
at least are unsuited to the position. I have seen them in Germany as
Frau Graefin this or that, and not only their appearance but their
house-keeping machinery, running noiselessly and accurately, proves
that there is something more than dollars behind them.
One of the rare human beings whom I have known, who has at the same
time the characteristics of the generous comrade, the good fellow, and
the fine gentleman; who in moral courage in time of terrible strain,
or in physical courage when one's back is to the wall, never quailed,
is an American woman; and thousands of my countrymen will say the
same.
You cannot produce this type without freedom, without giving them
opportunity, and taking the risks that are inherent in giving free
scope to personal prowess. But they are not the women whom our blatant
newspapers exploit, nor the women who buy the British aristocracy to
launch them socially, nor the women who pervade the continental hotels
and restaurants, nor the women whom as a rule the foreigner has the
opportunity to meet. They are the women who have helped us to absorb
the 21,000,000 aliens who have entered America since the Civil War;
the women who stood behind us when we fought out that war for four
years, leaving a million men on the fields of battle; the women who in
the realm of housekeeping, to come down to practical levels, have
revolutionized these duties and turned a drudgery into an art as have
no other women in the world. The best answer the American can make to
the luxurious lawlessness of some of our women, is to point to the
house-keeping and home-making of his compatriots, not only at home but
right here in Germany. Fifty years ago it could not have been said,
but to-day there is no doubt in my mind that American house-keeping is
the best in the world. In comfort, in the smooth running of the
household machinery, in good food and drink, perhaps in too lavish and
too luxurious hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class by
ourselves in matters of housewifery.
The English attitude of women toward men is somewhat that of
comradeship, and once married the man's comfort is looked after with
some care; the American attitude of women toward men, in the more
luxurious circles, is often, I admit, that of a spoiled child toward a
gift-bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship her along the
lines of a restricted rubric; but in Germany the subordination, the
unquestioning and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance of
inferiority have not only softened the men but robbed the women of
even sufficient independence to make them the helpmates that they try
to be. There have been women of social and even political influence:
Bettina von Arnim, Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel
Varnhagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems to have been a soothing
adjunct of the Foreign Office. It is rather as admirers than as
executives that they shine. Their attitude toward the great Goethe,
and his nonchalant polygamy toward them, is difficult for us to
understand and approve.
"The gentle Henrietta then,
And a third Mary next did reign,
And Joan and Jane and Andria;
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Katherine,
And then a long et cetera."
No real man is a misogynist, for not to like women is not to be a man.
There are, however, many men, both in Germany and out of it, who
greatly dislike sham women; that is, women who shirk their functional
responsibilities. This form of dislike is a healthy instinct. Women
are given the greatest and most inspiring of all tasks: to make men;
and a woman who cannot make a man, by giving birth to one, or by
developing one as son or husband, has failed more deplorably even than
a man who cannot make a living. This task of theirs constitutes a
superiority impossible to deny or to overcome. A woman, therefore, who
craves man's activities and standards is as foolish as though a wheat-field
should long to be a bakery. Most healthy-minded men hold this
view, though some of us may think that German men overemphasize it.
The coarse sentimentality of the lower classes has been noted, but it
is not confined to them. The premarital relations of all but the most
cultured and experienced, are marked by a mawkish sweetness which is
all the more noticeable in contrast with the dull routine of saving
and slaving which follows. She begins by being photographed sitting in
her hero's lap, and ends by sitting on the less comfortable chair to
darn his socks and to tend his babies. There are women enthroned, and
who deserve to be, in Germany as in other countries; but taken in the
mass, speaking in hundreds of thousands, it is not an inaccurate
picture to say that the women are not taken seriously in Germany
except as mothers and servants.
The census of 1910 shows that there are 32,040,166 men in Germany and
32,885,827 women, or 845,661 more women than men. The number of men in
proportion to the number of women is steadily increasing in Germany,
showing that the habits of the men are more and more feminine, that
the state provides for them and protects them, and that the women take
good care of them.
In a virile state, where the men take risks, where they play hazardous
games, where they travel and seek adventure, where they emigrate to
seek new opportunities, the women will greatly outnumber the men. The
excess of females in England and Wales in 1871 was 594,000; in 1881,
694,000; in 1891, 896,000; in 1911, 1,178,000. The United Kingdom has
the largest surplus of women of leisure in the world, and just now
they are taking advantage of their numerical superiority in the most
delightful and comical feminine fashion. They are proving their right
to assist in coercing others to obey the laws, by disobeying the laws
themselves. By pouring vitriol on golf-greens, by pinning their
defiance to these dishevelled greens with hair-pins, they propose to
provoke the recalcitrant to recognition of their right to pin their
names to seats in the House of Commons. It is all so sweetly feminine,
that the stranger is astonished to hear such women dubbed unwomanly.
Pray, what could be more womanly in England, than to pin a protest to
a golf-green with a hair-pin!
The German army, which is in itself a school of hygiene for the man,
where the death-rate is the lowest of any army in Europe, and the many
provisions for the state care of the population, all go to coddle the
men and protect them. The various forms of labor insurance alone in
Germany cost the state over $250,000 a day, and if we include the
amount expended in compensation in all its forms, the yearly bill of
the state for the care of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to
nearly $170,000,000. No wonder that between the care of a
grandmotherly state, and the attentions of a subservient womankind,
the male population increases. I sometimes question whether there is
not something of the hot-house culture about this male crop. Certainly
consumption and other diseases are very wide-spread. A very detailed
and careful investigation of certain forms of weakness is being made
by our Rockefeller Institute at this time, and if I am not mistaken in
the results of what these investigations have thus far disclosed, it
will be found that Germany has her full share of rottenness to deal
with. To those who care to corroborate these hints with facts I
recommend the reading of certain recent numbers of the hygienic
Rundschau, a German technical magazine of repute.
There is a lack of vitality and elasticity, a stodgy, plodding way of
working, much indulgence in gregarious eating and drinking, and very
mild forms of exercise and holiday-making, comparatively little sport,
almost no game-playing where boys and men hustle one another about as
in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours of application, from the
school-boy to the ministers of state, all of which tend to and do
produce a physical lack of alertness, vivacity, and audacity in the
men of practically all classes.
The way to see the people of a country is to stand by the hour in the
large industrial towns and watch them as they go to and from their
work; to watch them flocking in and out of railway stations, and at
work in large numbers in the fields of Saxony, Silesia, and other
parts of Prussia; to spend hours, and I admit that they are tedious
hours, strolling through factories, ship-yards, mines, and offices,
paying no attention to the talk of your guide, but studying the faces
and physique of the men and women. Having done this, an impartial
observer is bound to remark that industrial and commercial Germany is
taking a tremendous toll for the rapid progress she has made. It may
be no worse here than elsewhere, but neither has the problem of a
healthy, happy, toiling population been satisfactorily solved here,
though perhaps better here than elsewhere. I have heard the women and
girls in factories singing at their work, but the bird is no less
caged because it sings.
Men who ought to know better set an example of long hours of
confinement at their work which is quite unnecessary. They tell you
with pride that they are at it from eight or nine in the morning till
seven and often till later at night. That is something that no sane
man ought to be proud of. On investigation you find that in industrial
and commercial circles, and in the offices of the state, men take two
hours for luncheon and then return to work till nightfall. Two hours
in the open air at the end of the day could be managed easily, but
they do not want it. There is no vitality left for a game, for
exercise, for a bath, and a change.
They drug themselves with work, and slip away to the theatre, to a
concert, to a Verein or circle, unwashed, ungroomed, and physically
torpid, and the great mass of the population, high and low alike,
outside the army officers, look it.
The army officer's career is dependent upon his mental and physical
vigor. The cylinder is quickly handed him and the helmet taken away if
he grows too fat and too slow physically and mentally. There is no
nepotism, no favoritism, and on reaching a certain rank he goes, if he
falls below the standard required, and consequently he keeps himself
fit. But a huge bureaucracy, with its stupid promotions by years and
not by ability, with its government stroke, and its dangling pensions,
positively breeds lassitude, laziness, and dulness. You may see it on
every hand in government offices, in the railway and postal services,
where men are evidently kept on not for their fitness but by the
tyranny of the system. High officials admit as much.