IMMORALITY AND OBSCENITY
Gard now descended unwittingly into one of the darkest regions of
German life, and one which foreign publics had persistently missed
or voluntarily overlooked in their chorus of approbation of the
race.
It is a familiar dictum that one can judge of a nation pretty fairly
by the position and treatment of its women. Kirtley had never, in
America, heard anything about Deutschland in this light. But he soon
found in Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics
on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the
general emphasis laid on German preëminence. This emphasis was
mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about
achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of
the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept
widespread. German femininity was assumed to be of a predominating
excellence to match that of German masculinity.
No study of a people is indeed complete without an unglossed inquiry
into its conduct toward its women and children. To say that the
German's business traits are the same and as reputable as those of
other races, is below the mark. In this secular domain he is
compelled to deal and to act within the accepted formulæ of trade.
To do otherwise would be to ostracize himself.
But he is in no such competition or is subject to no such exactions
in his attitude toward his own women and children. With them he does
as he pleases and his real nature stands forth. These truly vital
matters have been passed over as if unnoticed by the world, as has
been said, and still it wonders why it cannot learn what the German
is--does not understand him. He is, perhaps more than anyone, what
he is toward his own inferiors--toward those who are weaker and
dependent.
The question of German womanhood and girlhood should not therefore
be blinked by the earnest contemplator. It was not long before Gard
was saying to himself that if Americans could be made to realize
the status of womankind in Deutschland, they would not be so lured
by the idea of sending their young folk thither for education. There
would be a marked decline in their generous enthusiasm for _all_
things German. In what civilized land does woman lead less in lofty,
sublimated power or put a fainter stamp on the talents of the race?
German art, music, poetry, language, politics, education, all are
distinctively masculine. The Teuton woman merely partakes of the
life of man, the ideal. She does not assume to lead him. She would
seem so far below par that, as Gard had seen, even flirtation
scarcely exists in Deutschland. Flirtation is particularly a custom
among equals.
When he returned Friedrich's visits as promised, he found him
sharing the room of his friend Karl Messer. Messer was a successful
architect who had already secured a Government commission while the
equally youthful Kirtley--may it be repeated--had not begun real
life and, according to the American plan, could do nothing very
well. Those two room-mates and cronies were leading the typical
Teuton existence of youths who combined proficient work with a frank
sensuality accompanied, of course, by much imbibing in the German
way. And it may be preliminarily noted that what explorations Gard
afterward made in this great and seamy side of Teuton nature,
likewise ended in a downward direction toward depths that he had
scarcely thought possible in the educated human.
Von Tielitz and Messer had been at an uproarious ball the night
before and were idling about, recuperating. They had accomplished
the ruin there of two girls, which they looked upon as truly manly
sport. Assuming that Kirtley, as must be the case with all young
men, was equally interested with them in being satyrs, they lost no
time in trying to entertain him with their adventures.
The pursuit of woman! In Germany this is not very difficult, as she
is not visibly unhappy to consider herself the legitimate prey of
the lordly sex. This idea runs naturally and powerfully throughout
the Teuton scheme. It is not merely that the female is considered to
have a price, but the price must be low, if not a cypher. To German
women the triumphant male is a splendid creature. His acts are
noble. To be hungry, thirsty, sensual are proper, and therefore
candid, attributes in man. In order to subdue the earth, the race
must be prolific, and to be prolific, desires must not be limited or
weakened by pale Puritanisms. That men are normally uncleansed
sewers from which the face need not be averted, was a conception
Kirtley's senses had fallen somewhat foul of in the Bucher home. To
what point this aspect was carried logically outside Villa Elsa, he
was to realize in skirting the openly sensual sides.
The two Germans told of the various girls who had lived with them
when in college. For the frank amatory life of the Teuton student
begins early. Von Tielitz and Messer also boasted of their
present-day mistresses who were so often changed for reasons of
economy. The hilarious game, as Gard learned, was to obtain favors
in exchange for nothing as far as possible. Trickery, lies, abuse,
kicks, were employed to this purpose. Female chastity? A fable for
the impotent. Consequently all was fair.
Sisters of their respected fellows were inferentially appraised and
colloquially "hefted" as articles of social commerce ready to be
knocked off matrimonially to the best bidder under the material
rules of the German _Mitgift_ system. Through the garish films of
innuendo and braggadocio that day Kirtley was led to behold images
of these daughters as if they were languishing to become mates and
beating their breasts in their longing to become mothers. He had by
no means now forgotten Friedrich's equivocal remarks about Elsa.
Before Gard was to leave Deutschland he had to conclude that the
German puts himself in the attitude of thinking of his women as
sluttish and accordingly acting in that scale toward them. There
is no great gilding to these fancies. Girls are small inspiration
to him compared with what the _petites dames_ are to the amorous
Frenchman. Idealization of love in its ultimate fulfillment, the
poetizing of the ardent flesh crying out for its craving mate,
are characteristically ignored by the Teuton who seeks the baser
gratifications without illuminations of loveliness or hesitations
of delicate refinement.
Kirtley thought he knew young men, yet this revolting capacity in
them in Germany was proven to him to be not unnormal by its openness
and by the dearth of any loud voices in rebuke. The German is
conspicuously full of animal spirits. He affects the mighty in
physique. Exudations and emanations are frank and prominent
functions.
Under the Kaiser the Berlin dame who rented rooms to the foreign
student, offering them "with" or "without," meaning sometimes her
own daughter in the bargain, considered herself respectable enough.
More than this she acted in line with what appeared to be the
purpose of acquiring a sympathetic control of the morals as well as
the minds of the alien sojourner, the one being accompanied by a
pandering to his lower nature with the doors of vice flagrantly ajar
while the other armed his mentality with a Teutonized equipment and
outlook. To sap the will, to galvanize the mind as from a German
electric battery, palsied resistance to aggressive Germania. It was
of a piece with that propaganda which the world was not to wake up
to until almost too late.
These downright animal phases pointed the way logically, in Gard's
mind, to that obscenity which is interwoven in the German
civilization. He had first come across such evidence in leading
comic journals. The drawings and jests that did not leave much to
be filled out, adorned many a German page with an Adamic candor. It
divorced him from _Simplicissimus_ and _Ulk_, not that he was
squeamish or a Miss Priscilla, but he saw no fun in that sort of
thing.
He talked of it later with Anderson. Though there were pleasant
delusions in Anderson's mind about Germany before he arrived, it was
not his fault if few seemed to be left after his seven years. He
bluntly defined the limited German wit and humor as
characteristically born of the latrine.
Gard's two young friends did not refrain from talk in the key of
indecency. Their complacent revelation of the extent to which the
pornographic enters into the German scene, suggested an unclosed
Priapean volume whose companion in America is as a sealed book.
Kirtley heard that stores filled with obscene objects publicly for
sale were to be found on frequented thoroughfares in German cities.
He saw that Frau Bucher's insistence on a chaperone, which he had
regarded a silly, outworn conventionality, appeared most wise.
Germany was a poor place for an unguarded German girl.
This ran through his mind:
"Great Guns! What a country for me to study for the ministry, study
morality, best fit myself for life, as advised by Rebner and, it
seems--everybody!"