One hears a good deal in these days about "What America can teach
France;" though it is worth noting that the phrase recurs less often now
than it did a year ago.
In any case, it would seem more useful to leave the French to discover
(as they are doing every day, with the frankest appreciation) what they
can learn from us, while we Americans apply ourselves to finding out
what they have to teach us. It is obvious that any two intelligent races
are bound to have a lot to learn from each other; and there could hardly
be a better opportunity for such an exchange of experience than now that
a great cause has drawn the hearts of our countries together while a
terrible emergency has broken down most of the surface barriers between
us.
No doubt many American soldiers now in France felt this before they left
home. When a man who leaves his job and his family at the first call to
fight for an unknown people, because that people is defending the
principle of liberty in which all the great democratic nations believe,
he likes to think that the country he is fighting for comes up in every
respect to the ideal he has formed of it. And perhaps some of our men
were a little disappointed, and even discouraged, when they first came
in contact with the people whose sublime spirit they had been admiring
from a distance for three years. Some of them may even, in their first
moment of reaction, have said to themselves: "Well, after all, the
Germans we knew at home were easier people to get on with."
The answer is not far to seek. For one thing, the critics in question
knew the Germans at home, _in our home_, where they had to talk our
language or not get on, where they had to be what we wanted them to
be--or get out. And, as we all know in America, no people on earth, when
they settle in a new country, are more eager than the Germans to adopt
its ways, and to be taken for native-born citizens.
The Germans in Germany are very different; though, even there, they were
at great pains, before the war, not to let Americans find it out. The
French have never taken the trouble to disguise their Frenchness from
foreigners; but the Germans used to be very clever about dressing up
their statues of Bismarck as "Liberty Enlightening the World" when
democratic visitors were expected. An amusing instance of this kind of
camouflage, which was a regular function of their government, came
within my own experience in 1913.
For the first time in many years I was in Germany that summer, and on
arriving in Berlin I was much struck by the wonderful look of municipal
order and prosperity which partly makes up for the horrors of its
architecture and sculpture. But what struck me still more was the
extraordinary politeness of all the people who are often rude in other
countries: post-office and railway officials, customs officers,
policemen, telephone-girls, and the other natural enemies of mankind.
And I was the more surprised because, in former days, I had so often
suffered from the senseless bullying of the old-fashioned German
employé, and because I had heard from Germans that state paternalism had
become greatly aggravated, and that, wherever one went, petty
regulations were enforced by inexorable officials.
As it turned out, I found myself as free as air, and as obsequiously
treated as royalty, and I might have gone home thinking that the German
government was cruelly maligned by its subjects if I had not happened to
go one evening to the Opera.
It was in summer, but there had been a cold rain-storm all day, and as
the Opera House was excessively chilly, and it was not a full-dress
occasion, but merely an out-of-season performance, with everybody
wearing ordinary street clothes, I decided to keep on the light silk
cloak I was wearing. But as I started for my seat I felt a tap on my
shoulder, and one of the polite officials requested me to take off my
cloak.
"Thank you: but I prefer to keep it on."
"You can't; it's forbidden. _Es ist verboten._"
"Forbidden? Why, what do you mean?"
"His Majesty the Emperor forbids any lady in the audience of the Royal
and Imperial Opera House to keep on her cloak."
"But I've a cold, and the house is so chilly----"
The polite official had grown suddenly stern and bullying. "Take off
your cloak," he ordered.
"I won't," I said.
We looked at each other hard for a minute--and I went in with my cloak
on.
When I got back to the hotel, highly indignant, I met a German Princess,
a Serene Highness, one of the greatest ladies in Germany, a cousin of
his Imperial Majesty.