In Germany, one evening last winter I heard a German count give
a lecture on the _Ausländerei_. He started out by saying that for
years the German people had been suffering from a disease called
_Ausländerei_, which means that they have always been too fond of all
that is foreign, that they have been ashamed of being Germans, and that
they have tried to copy the manner, modes and customs of other nations
instead of sticking to their own national ideals.
He went into detail, beginning with the foreign names used all over
Germany. He said that instead of a hotel being called by the good
old-fashioned German word _Hof_, the hotel proprietors insisted on
using the word "hotel," combined, alas, too often with such words as
Bristol, Excelsior, Continental, Esplanade, Carlton, Westminster and
Savoy. He thought that much better words would be _Berlinerhof_ or
_Kaiserhof_.
He said that until three years ago messenger boys were called by the
English name "messenger boys," and he much preferred the new name
_Blitzjunge_ which means "lightning kid."
He lamented that even now English clothes for men were still being
sold in German shops, and that they were quoted as English and were
bought because they were English; that German women still follow Paris
fashions; but he said with emphasis: "A German heart under a Paris gown
is no true German heart." He said that a man who studied in England
liked to be styled "an Oxford man" or "a Cambridge man," and that
many a German woman who goes to Switzerland each year registers at the
fashionable hotels as "Madame Schultz" or "Madame Schmidt" instead of
"Frau."
He said further that when an Englishman or an American came to Germany,
he fully expected every German he met to know English, but no traveling
German expects any one to know German, and the German meekly learns the
languages of all the other races.
He ended by saying that he knew that no people had a greater love for
their country than the German people have, and that the time had come
for them to cease their imitations and to be Germans without foreign
ideals, thoughts or customs.
It is said that in Königsberg the military commander there has made it
a criminal offense for any one to use or circulate a foreign fashion
plate. There are also a small number of people who think that English
or French should not be spoken on the streets during the war, although
English and French are still being taught in the schools, and I often
saw youngsters studying their English lessons on the trains.
But I have found that the count, the military commander at Königsberg,
and the people who want nothing but German spoken on the streets
represent only a small portion of the German people; the whole cry of
the masses is for peace to come, so that they can have things from the
outside world again.
During the two years that I was in Berlin I talked English on the
streets nearly all the time, and I was spoken to only twice for talking
English. Once I went to Potsdam with an American boy, and we were
sitting in the train waiting for it to start. We thought the train was
empty, and we were talking English very fast and rather loud. Suddenly
a woman in black poked her head around from the next coupé and asked us
to stop talking English. "It hurts me," she said, "the English killed
my husband."
Another time I was talking to an American lady at the opera, when a
pinched-faced German lady turned around in front of us and said, "Don't
you know that this is the Royal German Opera House and that we are at
war with England?" She thought we were English. We said nothing but
commenced to speak German.
A funny thing happened to an American lady I knew. She was dining with
a Turkish officer dressed in civilian clothes. As the Turk knew no
German they were talking French. A nervous wounded German officer came
in and seated himself at a table near them. As soon as he heard the
French he sent the waiter over to tell them to stop. The Turk took his
military calling-card out of his pocket and sent it over to the German.
The German officer did the only thing there was to do--he came over and
apologized.
Once in a while in Berlin we were cut off the telephone when we spoke
English. This was a spy precaution, and Central would not connect us
again even when we spoke German.
In Cologne a number of dressmakers had a meeting to establish some
new styles for Germany. They dug up a lot of fashion plates from the
styles fifty years back, and had fashion plates printed from them and
model dresses made, and they tried to convince the modern German girl
that this was what she should wear. They called the new style the
_Reform-Kleid_ or "reform dress," but their scheme was not much of a
success, for if anything was ever ugly it was this dress. I never saw
more than half a dozen of these dresses on the street, but once at a
club I saw a number of them. They were made with a narrow skirt and
a loose Russian blouse for a waist. They were absolutely shapeless
and so were the women that were in them. The dresses were mostly made
of flowered silk and very little trimmed. The hat that went with the
reform costume was perfectly plain and fitted down over the head like
a pan.
The _Reform-Kleid_ is the butt of many a joke in the German weeklies,
and the German girls I know said that they would die before they
would wear them. Very wide skirts are the style in Germany, and the
government has tried to make women wear narrower ones because of the
amount of cloth it takes, but a woman's patriotism ceases where styles
are concerned, and they all manage to get the needed cloth for their
skirts.
Germany has been cut off from the world so long that her styles are
different from the rest of the world. Even the Scandinavian people
dress more like Americans. In Germany, very short-vamped, round-toed
shoes are the style; you couldn't buy a pair of pointed shoes there.
Last summer an American girl came over from the United States, and she
had been told beforehand to bring shoes. She brought eleven pairs of
pointed ones, and every time she went out the Germans stared at her
feet. The German hats sit high from the head, and short sleeves are
once more in fashion.
All the German women will be glad when they can have Paris fashions
again, and most German men try to dress like Englishmen. They love
English tweed and they think that there is nothing like a Burberry
coat. Many of the German officers wear a monocle and this is surely
English.
One old German fogey wanted to have all the letters on the German
typewriters changed to German script. But even at the mention of such a
thing the merchants and business men rose up and said they would never
have it. Café Piccadilly changed its name to Café Vaterland, but the
Russischer Hof is still so called, and the highest order in the German
army is still called _Pour le mérite_.
Of course you hear a lot of talk about _echt deutsche_ things, and
that now nothing is worth anything unless it is "made in Germany" and
is pure German. They call that patriotism, but the far-thinking German
realizes that it is the _Ausländerei_ that keeps a nation young, and
it was that which made Germany what she was before the war. The count
said that the Germans were "copy cats"--but was not this one of the
cleverest things about the German nation?