not to seek it there. The English club and the English home are
primarily for seclusion, not for companionship, and this
characteristic alone is wofully hard for the stranger to understand.
To the gregarious German, priding himself upon Gemuethlichkeit, loving
reunions, restaurants, his Stammtisch, formal and punctilious in his
politeness, unused to the ways of the world, but yet convinced that he
is now a great man politically and commercially, the Englishman is not
only an enigma but an insult. I am criticising neither. I have
received unbounded hospitality and friendliness from both. I have
ridden, fought, drunk, travelled, and lived with both, but for that
very reason I understand how horribly and continually they rub one
another the wrong way.
In the fundamental matter of morals the German looks upon the
Englishman as a hypocrite, and the Englishman looks upon the German as
rather unpolished and undignified. Berlin is open all night, London
closes at half-past twelve. The British Sunday is a gloomy suppression
of vitality, touched up here and there with preaching and hymn-singing,
and fringed with surreptitious golf; the German Sunday is a
national fair, with a blossoming of all kinds of amusements, deluged
with beer, and attended by whole families as their only relaxation
during the week.
The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gambling; the Englishman
refuses to recognize the existence of any of the three. The German
does not understand the Englishman's point of view in these matters,
which is that, though he knows these things to exist, and that he is
no better in actual practice than other men, he refuses to accept
these as his ideal. He denounces and passes judgment upon, and
punishes men and women, who go too far in their appreciation and
practice of apolausticism as a philosophy of life. He might have run
away from danger himself, but he none the less scorns the man who did
so. The shipwreck, the fire, the test of moral courage and endurance,
may have found him a coward, or weak, or a deserter, but he holds that
he must none the less measure the coward, the weakling, and the
deserter, not by his own possible weakness if put to the same tests,
but by his ideal of a courageous and straightforward Englishman. I
agree with him wholly and heartily. If our sympathy is to go out on
every occasion, to the man who failed to come up to the mark of noble
manhood, just because we feel that we might under like circumstances
have failed too, then we give up the code of honor altogether, and our
ideals droop to the level from which we fight and pray to be
preserved.
We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the failure, upon the man who
has not mastered his life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard
to do, it looks as though one were without pity and without sympathy.
Not so; it is because we have great sympathy, and I hope unending
pity, and a growing charity, and constant willingness to lend a hand;
but to condone failure is to commit the selfish and unpardonable
cowardice of not judging another that you may not be forced to judge
yourself too harshly. That is far from being hypocrisy. Indeed, in
these days it is one of the hardest things to do, so fast are we
levelling down socially and politically and even morally. It looks
like an assumption of superiority when, God knows, it is only a
timorous attempt on our part not to lose our grip on the ideals that
help to keep us out of the dust and the mud. But he who lets others
off lightly in order that he may not be thought to have too high a
standard himself, or because he fears that he may one day fail
himself, such a one is the coward of cowards, the candidate for the
lowest place in hell; and well he deserves it, for he helps to lower
the standard of manhood, and he tarnishes the shield of honor of the
whole race. Let them call us hypocrites till they strangle doing so,
for when we lower our standards because we fear that we cannot live up
to them ourselves, all will be lost. To be mild with other men,
because we distrust ourselves, is a poisonous sympathy that rots away
the life of him who receives it, and of him who gives it, and ends in
a slobbering charity which must finally protect itself by tyranny and
cruelty. Not infrequently in dealing with individuals and with subject
nations it is senseless cruelty to be over-kind.
This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of "Perfide Albion," is seldom
explained to other people by men of our race, and we Americans and
Englishmen have taken little pains to make it clear. We should not be
surprised, therefore, if we are misunderstood. We have been easily
first so long that we have neglected the explanation or the defence of
ourselves to others.
The Germans, too, have something of the same indifference. A most
sympathetic observer of German manners and customs, and a man for
whose honesty and gentleness I have the highest esteem, Pere Didon,
remarked of the Germans: "J'ai essaye maintes fois de decouvrir chez
l'Allemand une sympathie quelconque pour d'autres nations; je n'y ai
pas reussi."
I call attention again to the important point, that it has been
difficult to manufacture an all-round German patriotism. As a
consequence patriotism in Germany is more than a sentiment, it is a
theory, a doctrine, a theme to which statesmen, philosophers and
poets, and rulers devote their energies. The German looks upon his
nation not only as a people, but as a race, almost as a formal
religion; hence perhaps his hatred of the Jew and the Slav, and his
difficulties with all foreign peoples within his borders. In order to
build up his patriotism the German has been taught systematically to
dislike first the Austrians, then the French, now the English; and let
not the American suppose that he likes him any better, for he does
not. This patriotism, once developed, was drawn on for funds for an
army, then for a navy. At the present time there must be some
explanation offered, and the explanation is fear of England, dislike
of British arrogance. In one of his latest speeches the Kaiser said:
"We need this fleet to protect ourselves from arrogance"; that, of
course, means, always means, British arrogance.
From the moment a child goes to school, by pictures on the walls, by
an indirect teaching of history and geography, he is led on discreetly
to find England in Germany's way. At the present writing German school
children, and German students, and German recruits are imbued with the
idea that Germany's relations with England are in some sort an
armistice. This poisonous teaching of patriotism has produced wide-spread
enmity of feeling among the innocent, but this enmity has built
the navy. And now that in certain quarters it is found desirable to
soothe and calm this feeling, it proves to be more difficult to subdue
than it was to arouse. The monster that Frankenstein called up devours
its own creator. Now that England can no longer be the enemy, because
Germany's greatest present and future danger is from the Slav races,
there are evidences that the German state is teaching the dog not to
bark at England any more.
Germany has not neglected England, but of late she has paid her the
wrong kind of attention. Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was
the hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and writes: "Above all,
speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country
above all nations in the world, as they have good reason to be."
Kant, the German philosopher, on his clock-like rounds in Koenigsberg,
knew something of England and writes of her: "Die englische Nation,
als Volk betrachtet, ist das schaetzbarste Ganze von Menschen im
Verhaeltniss unter einander; aber als Staat gegen fremde Staaten der
verderblichste, gewaltsamste, herrschsuechtigste und kriegerregendste
von allen."
("The English, as a people, in their relations to one another are a
most estimable body of men, but as a nation in their relations with
other nations they are of all people the most pernicious, the most
violent, the most domineering, and the most strife-provoking.")
Another German, something of a scholar, something of a philosopher,
but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a
fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I
would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were
complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the
"starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and
put on the table as God made them" and the "country with three hundred
religions and only one sauce were a constant source of amused
annoyance. The German professors and students, who in the early part
of the nineteenth century lauded English constitutional liberty to the
skies and made a god of Burke, have soured toward England since.
"What does Germany want?" asked Thiers of the German historian Ranke.
"To destroy the work of Louis XIV," was the reply. Professor
Treitschke and his successor in the chair of history at Berlin,
Professor Delbrueck, have been outspoken in their denunciation of
England. Mommsen, Schmoller, Schiemann, Zorn of Bonn, and his
colleague there, von Dirksen, Professor Dietrich Schaefer, Professor
Adolph Wagner, and many other scholars have been, and are, politicians
in Germany, and none of them friendly to England, to France, or to
America. Bismarck himself remarked of these gentlemen: "Die Politik
ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich
einbilden, sie ist eben eine Kunst" ("Politics is not a science as
many professorial gentlemen fancy; it is an art"); and again: "Die
Arbeit des Diplomaten, seine Aufgabe, besteht in dem praktischen
Verkehr mit Menschen, in der richtigen Beurtheilung von dem, was
andere Leute unter gewissen Umstaenden wahrscheinlich thun werden, in
der richtigen Erkennung der Absichten anderer; in der richtigen
Darstellung der seinigen" ("The work of the diplomat, his chief task,
indeed, consists in the practical dealing with men, in his sound
judgment of what other people would probably do under certain
circumstances, in his correct interpretation of the intentions and
purposes of other people, and in the accurate presentation of his
own").
He began his political life in 1862 with the phrase: "Die grossen
Fragen koennen durch Reden und Majoritaetsbeschluesse nicht entschie den
werden, sondern durch Eisen und Blut" ("The great questions cannot be
decided by speeches and the decisions of majorities, but by iron and
blood").
It is a well-known professor who writes: "Denn die einzige Gefahr, die
den Frieden in Europa und damit den Weltfrieden droht, liegt in den
krankhaften Uebertreibungen des englischen Imperialismus" ("The only
danger to the peace of Europe, and that includes the peace of the
world, lies in the morbid excesses of British imperialism"). Another
quotation from the same pen reads: "So far as other perils to the
British Empire are concerned, they are of much the same character, but
the empire suffers too from the selfish policy of English business,
which, in order to create big business, does not hesitate to interfere
with the declared policy of the state." Then follows the statement
that English traders have smuggled guns to the Persian Gulf.
Professor Zorn writes: "The possibility that while our Emperor was
seeking rest and refreshment in Norwegian waters and enjoying the
beauties of the Norwegian landscape, English ships were lying in
readiness to annihilate German ships." It is hard to believe that such
lunatic lies can come from the pen of a professor in good standing.
"Ohne zu uebertreiben kann man sagen dass heute nur der allerkleinste
Teil der deutschen Presse geneigt ist, den Englaendern Gerechtigkeit
widerfahren zu lassen, bei Behandlung allgemeiner Fragen sich auch
einmal auf den englischen Standpunkt der Betrachtung wenigstens
zeitweise zu versetzen. England ist fur viele 'der' Feind an sich, und
em Feind dem man keine Ruecksichten schuldet."
("It is no exaggeration to say that nowadays only the tiniest minority
of the German press is inclined to do justice to the English by at
least occasionally looking at questions from the British point of
view. England is for many the enemy of enemies and an enemy to whom no
consideration is due.") Thus writes one of the cooler heads in the
Koelnische Zeitung.
Doctor Herbert von Dirksen, of Bonn, writing of the Monroe Doctrine,
says: "By what right does America attempt to check the strongest
expansion policy of all other nations of the earth?" During the Boer
war Germany was showered with post-cards and caricatures of the
English. British soldiers with donkey heads marched past Queen
Victoria and the Prince of Wales; the venerable Queen Victoria is
pictured plucking the tail feathers from an ostrich which she holds
across her knees; the three generals, Methuen, Buller, and Gatacre,
take off their faces to discover the heads of an ass, a sheep, and a
cow; Chamberlain is depicted as the instigator of the war, with his
pockets and hands full of African shares; a parade of the stock-exchange
volunteers depicts them as all Jews, with the Prince of Wales
as a Jew reviewing them; the Prince of Wales is pictured surrounded by
vulgar women, who ask, "Say, Fatty, you are not going to South
Africa?" to which the Prince replies, "No, I must stay here to take
care of the widows and orphans!" English soldiers are depicted in the
act of hitting and kicking women and children.
In the war with Denmark
in 1864 the Austrian navy met with a disaster at sea. A German
publicist even then wrote: "I was grieved at the demonstrations of joy
about this in the English Parliament. It was not sympathy with the
Danes but petty spite and malice at the defeat of a foreign fleet. But
at the same time it is a consolatory proof that the English are afraid
of the future German navy." This quotation is interesting as showing
how far back the quarrel dates.
It would be merely a question of how
much time one cares to devote to scissors and paste to multiply these
examples of Germany's journalistic and professorial state of mind. It
is unfortunate that some of this writing in the press is done by those
who are often in consultation with the Emperor, and on some political
subjects his advisers. I have suggested in another chapter that
Germany suffers far more from the theoretical and book-learned
gentlemen who surround the Emperor than from his indiscretions. In
more than one instance his indiscretions were due to their blundering.
Their knowledge of books far surpasses their knowledge of men, and
nothing can be more dangerous to any nation than to be counselled and
guided by pedants rather than by men of the world. This projecting a
world from the gaseous elements of one's own cranium and dealing with
that world, instead of the world that exists, is a danger to everybody
concerned.
"Bedauernswert sei es allerdings, dass wir in unserem politischen
Leben nicht mit gentlemen zu thun haben, dies sei aber em Begriff der
uns ueberhaupt abgehe," writes Prince Hohenlohe in his memoirs. ("It is
of all things most to be regretted that in our political life we do
not have gentlemen to deal with, but this is a conception of which we
are totally deficient.")
A daring colonial secretary, speaking in the Reichstag of certain
scandals in the German colonies, said bluntly: "A reprehensible caste
feeling has grown up in our colonies, the conception of a gentleman
being in England different from that in Germany."
When Lord Haldane came to Berlin, on his mission to discover if
possible a working basis for more friendly relations between the two
countries, his eyes were greeted in the windows of every book-shop
with books and pamphlets with such titles as "Krieg oder Frieden mit
England," "Das Perfide Albion," "Deutschland und der Islam," "Ist
England kriegslustig," "Deutschland sei Wach," "England's
Weltherrschaft und die deutsche Luxusflotte," "John Bull und wir," and
a long list of others, all written and advertised to keep alive in the
German people a sense of their natural antagonism to England.
During the last year the "Letters of Bergmann" brought up again the
controversy, that should have been left to die, over the treatment of
the Emperor Friedrich by an English surgeon.
In discussing Senator Lodge's resolution before the United States
Senate, on the Monroe Doctrine, the German press spoke of us as
"hirnverbrannte Yankees," "bornierte Yankeegehirne" ("crazy Yankees,"
"provincial Yankee intellects"); and the words "Dollarika,"
"Dollarei," and "Dollarman" are further malicious expressions of their
envy, frequently used. The Germans are persistently taught that there
are neither scholars nor students in America or in England. One worthy
writes: "Die Englaender lernen nichts. Der Sport laesst ihnen keine Zeit
dazu. Man ist hinterher auch zu muede."
I am always very glad, when I happen to be in Europe, that I belong to
a nation that can afford to take these flings with the greatest good-humor.
As the burly soldier replied when questioned in court as to why
he allowed his small wife to beat him: "It pleases her and it don't
hurt I."
This struggle for recognition as a great nation, to be received on
equal terms by the rest of us, has upset the nerves of certain classes
in Germany, and among them the untravelled and small-town-dwelling
professor.
I am a craftsman in letters myself, in a small way, but I am no
believer that books are the only key to life, or the only way to find
a solution for its riddles and problems. Life is language, and books
only the dictionaries; men are the text, books only the commentaries.
Books are only good as a filter for actual experiences. A man must
have a rich and varied experience of men and women before he can use
books to advantage. Life is varied, men and women many, while the
individual life is short; wise men read books, therefore, to enrich
their experience, not merely as the pedant does, to garner facts.
"J'etudie les livres en attendant que J'etudie les hommes," writes
Voltaire. "Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a
mighty bloodless substitute for life," writes Stevenson.
Montgolfier sees a woman's skirt drying and notices that the hot air
fills it and lifts it, and this gives him the idea for a balloon.
Denis Papin sees the cover lifted from a pot by the steam, and there
follow the myriad inventions in which steam is the driving power.
Newton, dozing under an apple-tree, is hit on the head by a falling
apple, and there follows the law of gravitation.
Franklin flies a kite, and a shock of electricity starts him upon the
road to his discoveries.
Archimedes in his bath notices that his body seems to grow lighter,
and there follows the great law which bears his name.
These are the foundation-stones upon which the whole house of science
is built, and no one of them was dug out of a book. Charlemagne could
not read, and Napoleon, when he left school for Paris, carried the
recommendation from his master that he might possibly become a fair
officer of marines, but nothing more! A capital example of the ability
of the man of books to measure the abilities of the man of the world.
Reading and writing are modern accomplishments, and we grossly
exaggerate their importance as man-makers. That, it has always been my
contention, is the fatal fallacy of modern education, and you may see
it carried to its extreme in Germany, for men who have not lived
broadly are merely hampered by books. It is as though one studied a
primer with an etymological dictionary at his side. Germans are
renowned writers of commentaries, but you cannot deal with men and
with life by the aid of commentaries. Exegesis solves no international
quarrels, and the mastery of men is not gained with dictionaries and
grammars.
We are all prone to forget the end in the means, for the end is far
away and the means right under our noses. We all recognize, when we
are pulled up short and made to think, that, after all, the arts and
letters, religion and philosophy and statecraft, are for one ultimate
purpose, which is to develop the complete man. Everything must be
measured by its man-making power. Ideas that do not grow men are
sterile seed. Men who do not move other men to action and to growth
are not to be excused because they stir men to the merely pleasant
tickling of thinking lazily and feeling softly. Thus Lincoln was a
greater man than Emerson; Bismarck a greater than Lessing; Cromwell a
greater than Bunyan; Napoleon a greater than Corneille and Racine;
Pericles greater than Plato; and Caesar greater than Virgil.
The man who only makes maps for the mind is only half a man, until his
thinking, his influence, his dreams and enthusiasms take on the
potency of a man and come into action. Even if men of action do evil,
as some of those I mention have done, they have translated theories
into palpable things that permit men to judge whether they be good or
bad; and the really great artists, thinkers, and saints are as fertile
as though they were female, and gave birth, to living things. Their
thinking is a form of action. The real test of successful organization
is the thoroughness of the thinking behind it; on the other hand, the
only test of thinking is the success of the thought in actual
execution, and the Germans often take this too much for granted. We
really know and hold as an inalienable intellectual possession only
what we have gained by our own effort, and with a certain degree of
actual exertion. People who have never worked out their own salvation
always join, at last, that large class in the body politic who don't
know what they want, and who will never be happy till they get it.
When it comes to dealing with inanimate things, books of rules are
invaluable. Hence, in chemistry, physics, archaeology, philology,
exegesis, the Germans have forged ahead; their intellectual street-cleaning
is unsurpassed; but the ship of state needs not only men to
take observations and to read charts, but men to trim the sails to the
fitful breezes, the blustering winds, the tempests and the changing
currents of life. They must know, too, the methods, the manners, the
habits of other men who sail the seas of life. It is just here that
the German fails; he lacks the confidence of experience, and bursts
into bluster and bravado. He is a believer in vicarious experience,
and is as little likely to be saved by it, in this world at least, as
he is by vicarious sacrifice.
His imagination does not make allowances for either England or
America. He does not see, for example, that the Monroe Doctrine is not
open for discussion for the simple reason that America has announced
it as American policy; just as Prussia took part three times in the
dismemberment of Poland; just as Prussia pounced upon Silesia; just as
Germany took Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein and Frankfort, and
held the ring while Austria-Hungary bagged Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
by the word of her Emperor, promised to do the same thing for Russia,
when Japan declared war against her. We have decided that we will have
no European sovereignty in South America, and this side war, that is
the end of the matter, call it the Monroe Doctrine or what you will.
It only makes for uneasiness and bad temper to discuss it. It is the
national American policy. It may be right or wrong theoretically, but
international law has nothing to do with it. The German professors who
discuss it from that stand-point, are beating the air and raising a
dust in the world's international drawing-room.
This German mania for translating facts back into philosophy and then
dancing through a discussion of theories is not understood, much less
appreciated, by the rest of the world. We can never get on if we are
to introduce the discussion of the lines of every new battle-ship by
arguments as to the sea-worthiness of the ark. Those of us who control
a quarter of the habitable globe, and the inhabitants thereof, are
much too busy to discuss the legal aspects of the land-grabbing of the
Pharaohs. Geography is not metaphysics, but it is wofully hard for the
professorial mind to grasp this.
"Given a mouse's tail, and he will guess
With metaphysic quickness at the mouse."