Chapter VII: The Distaff Side (1)

Madame Necker writes of women: "Les femmes tiennent la place de ces lagers duvets qu'on introduit dans les caisses de porcelaine; on n'y fait point d'attention, mais si on les retire, tout se brise."

When one sees women and dogs harnessed together dragging carts about the streets; when one sees women doing the lighter work of sweeping up leaves and collecting rubbish in the forests and on the larger estates; doing the gardening work in Saxony and other places; when one sees them by the hundreds working bare-legged in the beet-fields in Silesia and elsewhere throughout Germany; when one reads "Viele Weiber sind gut weil sie nicht wissen wie man es machen muss um boese zu sein," and "Der Mann nach Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach Sitte," two phrases from the German classics, Lessing and Goethe; when one recalls the shameless carelessness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of how his love-poems were sometimes sent by the same mail to the lady and to the press; and the unrestrained worship of Goethe by the German women of his day; when one sees time and time again all over Germany the women shouldered into the street while the men keep to the sidewalk; when one sees in the streets, railway carriages, and other public conveyances, the insulting staring to which every woman is subjected if she have a trace of good looks, one realizes that at any rate Madame Necker was not writing of German women. Let me add that so far as the great Goethe is concerned, it is by no Puritan yard-stick that I am measuring him, but by the German's own high standard which despises any mating of true sentiment with commercialism. "Beatus ille qui procul negotiis," certainly applies to one's affairs of the heart.

In the gallery at Dresden, where the loveliest mother's face in all the world shines down upon you from Raphael's canvas like a benediction, there is a small picture by Rubens, "The Judgment of Paris." The three goddesses--induitur formosa est; exuitur ipsa forma est --have taken literally the compliment paid to a certain beautiful customer by a renowned French dressmaker: "Un rien et madame est habillee!" They are coquettishly revealing their claims to the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his hand. Paris and his friend are in the most nonchalant of attitudes. They could not be more indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were they dandies judging the class for costermonger's donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The three most beautiful women in the world are squirming and posturing for praise, and a decision, before two as sophisticated and self-satisfied men as one will ever see on canvas or off it.

The same subject is treated by a man of the same breed, but of a later day, named Feuerbach, and his picture hangs, I think, in Breslau. Here again the supersuperiority of the male is portrayed.

In the Church of Saint Sebaldus at Nuremberg, there is a delightful mural painting which makes one merry even to recall it. The subject is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are being lectured by an elderly man in flowing robes with a long white beard. His beard alone would more than supply Adam and Eve with the covering they lack. In an easy attitude, with neither haste nor anxiety, he is pointing out to them the error of their ways. He is as detached in manner as though he were Professor Wundt, lecturing to us at Leipsic on the fourth dimension of space. Adam is somewhat dejected and reclines upon the ground. Eve, unabashed, with nothing on but the apple which she is munching, is evidently in a reckless mood. She looks like a child of fifteen, with her hair down her back; the defiance of her attitude is that of a naughty little girl. The world-old problem is under discussion, but with an air of good humor and cheerfulness on the part of the lecturer, as though there were still time in the world, as though hurry were an undiscovered human attribute, as though possibly the world would still go on even if the problem were left unsolved, and this first leafy parliament adjourned sine die.

They were so much wiser than are we! They knew then that there would be other sessions of congress, and that it was not necessary to decide everything on that spring day of the year One. But here again in this picture it is the male attitude toward the woman that is of chief interest. Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for the professor in the red robes, his easy, patronizing manner is indicative enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the woman question. You can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard: "Kueche, Kinder, Kirche!"

From the fields of Silesia, where the beet industry is possible only because there are hundreds of bare-legged girls and women to single the beets, a process not possible by machinery, at a wage of from twenty-five to thirty cents a day, to these German paintings with their illustrations of the spiritual and moral attitude of the German man toward the German woman, one sees everywhere and among practically all classes an attitude of condescension toward women among the polite and polished; an attitude of carelessness bordering on contempt among the rude. Their attitude is like that of the Jews who cry in their synagogues, "Thank God for not having made me a woman!"

One can judge, not incorrectly, of the status of women in a country by the manners and habits of the men, entirely dissociated from their relations to women. When one sees men equipped with small mirrors and small brushes and combs, which they use in all sorts of public places, even in the streets, in the street-cars, in omnibuses, and in the theatres; when one opens the door to a knock to find a gentleman, a small mirror in one hand and a tiny brush in the other, preparing himself for his entrance into your hotel sitting-room; you are bound to think that these persons are in the childhood days of personal hygiene, as it cannot be denied that they are, but also that their women folk must be still in the Eryops age of social sophistication, not to put a stop to such bucolic methods of grooming. Even though the Eryops is a gigantic tadpole, a hundred times older than the oldest remains of man, this is hardly an exaggeration.

In no other country in the cultured group of nations is the animal man so naively vain, so deliciously self-conscious, so untrained in the ways of the polite world, so serenely oblivious, not merely of the rights of women but of the simple courtesy of the strong to the weak. It is the only country I have visited where the hands of the men are better cared for than the hands of the women; and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the question of who does the rough work, and who has the vanity and who the leisure for a meticulous toilet. One must not forget that regular and systematic cleansing of the person is a very modern fashion. As late as the early part of the nineteenth century, tooth-brushes were not allowed in certain French convents, being looked upon as a luxury. Cleanliness was not very common a century and a half ago in any country. In 1770 the publication of Monsieur Perrel's "Pogonotomie, ou 1'Art d'apprendre a se raser soi-meme," created a sensation among fashionable people, and enthusiasts studied self-shaving. The author of "Lois de la Galanterie" in 1640 writes: "Every day one should take pains to wash one's hands, and one should also wash one's face almost as often!"

The copious streams of hot and cold water, turned into a porcelain tub at any time of the day or night; the brushes, and soaps, and towels, and toilet waters, and powders of our day were quite unknown to our not far-off ancestors. The oft-repeated and minute ablutions of our day are almost as modern as bicycles, and not as ancient as the railways. The Germans are only a little behind the rest of us in this soap and water cult, that is all.

In the streets and public conveyances of the cities, in the beer-gardens and restaurants in the country, in the summer and winter resorts from the Baltic to the Black Forest, from the Rhine to Bohemia, it is ever the same. They seat themselves at table first, and have their napkins hanging below their Adam's apples before their women are in their chairs; hundreds of times have I seen their women arrive at table after they were seated, not a dozen times have I seen their masters rise to receive them; their preference for the inside of the sidewalk is practically universal; even officers in uniform, but this is of rare occurrence, will take their places in a railway carriage, all of them smoking, where two ladies are sitting, and wait till requested before throwing their cigars away, and what cigars! and then by smiles and innuendoes make the ladies so uncomfortable that they are driven from the carriage. Even eleven hundred years ago the German woman had rather a rough time of it. Charlemagne had nine wives, but he seems to have been unduly uxorious or unwearying in his infatuations. He made the wife travel with him, and all nine of them died, worn out by travel and hardship. There is a constancy of companionship which is deadly.

The inconveniences and discomfort of going about alone, for ladies in Germany, I have heard not from a dozen, but in a chorus from German ladies themselves. I am reciting no grievances of my compatriots, for I have seen next to nothing of Americans for a year or more, and I have no personal complaints, for these soft adventurers scent danger quickly, and give the masters of the world, whether male or female, a wide berth.

These gross manners are the result of two factors in German life that it is well to keep in mind. They are a poor people, only just emerging from poverty, slavery, and disaster; poor not only in possessions, but poor in the experience of how to use them. They do not know how to use their new freedom. They are as awkward in this new world of theirs, of greater wealth and opportunity, as unyoked oxen that have strayed into city streets. The abject deference of the women, who know nothing better than these parochial masters, adds to their sense of their own importance. It is largely the women themselves who make their men insupportable.

The other factor is the rigid caste system of their social habits. There is no association between the officers, the nobility, the officials, the cultured classes, and the middle and lower classes. The public schools and universities are learning shops; they do not train youths in character, manners, or in the ways of the world. They do not play together, or work together, or amuse themselves together. The creeds and codes, habits and manners of the better classes are, therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate those less experienced. There is no word for gentleman in German. The words gebildeter and anstaendiger are used, and it is significant to notice that the stress is thus laid on mental development or upon obedience to formal rules. A man may be a very great gentleman and a true gentleman and not be a scholar. The late Duke of Devonshire cared more for horses than for books and pictures, and Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest gentlemen of all time.

In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking, elderly man step aside and off the sidewalk to let two ladies pass. It was for Germany a noticeable act. He turned out to be a famous general then in waiting upon the Emperor. There are not a few such courtly gentlemen in Germany, not a few whose knightliness compares with that of any gentleman in the world. Alas for the great bulk of the Germans, they never come into contact with them, their example is lost, their leaven of high breeding and courtesy does not lighten the bourgeois loaf! In America and in England we are all threading our way in and out among all classes. We are much more democratic. Men of every class are in contact with men of every other, we play together and work together, and consequently the level of manners and habits is higher. This state of things is less marked in south Germany than in Prussia, but is more or less true everywhere.

But how can this be possible, I hear it replied, in that land where every officer clacks his heels together with a report like an exploding torpedo, ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every civilian of any standing does the same? I am not writing of the nobility and of the corps of officers in this connection. No doubt there are black sheep among them, though I have not met them. Of the many scores of them whom I have met, whom I have ridden with, dined with, romped with, drunk with, travelled with, I have only to say that they are as courteous, as unwilling to offend or to take advantage, as are brave men in other countries I know. I am writing of the average man and woman, of those who make up the bulk of every population, of those upon whom it depends whether a national life is healthy or otherwise.

The very stiffness of these mannerisms, the clacking of heels, the ducking of heads, the kissing of hands, the countless grave formalities among the men themselves, are all indicative of social weakness. They are afraid to walk without the crutches of certain formulae, of certain hard-and-fast rules, of certain laws that they worship and fall down before. Slavery is still upon them. Escaped from a bodily master they fly to the refuge of a moral and spiritual one. These formalities are prescribed forms which they wear as they wear uniforms; they are not the result of innate consideration.

Uniform-wearing is a passion among the Germans, and may be included as still another indication of the universal desire to take refuge behind forms, and laws, and fixed customs, the universal desire to shrink from depending upon their own judgment and initiative. They will not even bow or kiss a lady's hand, without a prescription from a social physician whom they trust.

The German officials are always officials, always addressed and addressing others punctiliously by their titles. They do not throw off officialdom outside their duties and their offices as we do, but they glory in it. We throw off our uniforms as soon as may be; we feel hampered by them. This leads to a feeling on the part of the Germans that we are too free and easy, and not respectful enough toward our own dignity or toward theirs. We feel, on the other hand, that it is a farce to go to the every-day markets of life, whether for daily food or for daily social intercourse, with the bullion and certified checks of our official dignity; we go rather with the small change that jingles in all pockets alike, and is ready to be handed out for the frequent and unimportant buying and selling of the day and hour. We look upon this grallatory attitude toward life as artificial and hampering, and prefer to walk among our neighbors as much as possible upon our own feet.

I am not pretending to fix standards of etiquette. I can quite understand that when we grab the hand of the German's wife and shake it like a pump-handle instead of bowing over it; that when we nod cheerfully to him in the street with a wave of the hand or a lifting of a cane or umbrella instead of taking off our hat; that when we fail to address both him and his lady with the title belonging to them, no matter how commonplace that title, we shock his prejudices and his code of good manners.

If there is a stranger, a lady, in the drawing-room before dinner the German men line up in single file and ask to be presented to her. If the lady is tall and handsome and the party a large one, it looks almost like an ovation. If you go to dine at an officers' mess the men think it their duty to come up and ask to be presented to you. They wear their mourning bands on the forearm instead of the upperarm; they wear their wedding-rings on the fourth finger of the right hand; many of them wear rather more conspicuous jewelry than we consider to be in good taste.

The sofa, too, plays a role in German households and offices for which I have sought in vain for an explanation. Not even German archaeology supplies a historical ancestry for this sofa cult. It is the place of honor. If you go to tea you are enthroned on the sofa. Even if you go to an office, say of the police, or of the manager of the city slaughter-house, or of the hospital superintendent, you are manoeuvred about till they get you on the sofa, generally behind a table. I soon discovered that this was the seat of honor. Sofas have their place in life, I admit. There are sofas that we all remember with tears, with tenderness, with reverence. They have been the boards upon which we first appeared in the role of lover perhaps; or where we have fondled and comforted a discouraged child; or where we have pumped new ambitions and larger life into a weaker brother; or where we have tossed in the agony of grief or disappointment; or where we have waited drearily and alone the result of a consultation of moral or physical life and death in the next room. Indeed, this all reminds me that I could write an essay on sofas that would be poignant, touching, autobiographical, luminous, as could most other men, but this would not explain the position of the sofa in Germany in the least. "Travels on a Sofa"--I must do it one day, and perhaps, with more serious study of the subject, light may be thrown upon this question of the sofa in Germany.

Even at large and rather formal dinner-parties the host bows and drinks to his guests, first one and then another. At the end of the meal, in many households, it is the custom to bow and kiss your hostess's hand and say "Mahlzeit," a shortened form of "May the meal be blessed to you." You also shake hands with the other guests and say "Mahlzeit." In some smarter houses this is looked upon as old- fashioned and is not done. I look upon it as a charming custom, and think it a pity that it should be done away with.

Young unmarried girls and women courtesy to the elder women and kiss their hands, also a custom I approve. On the other hand, where a stalwart officer appears in a small drawing-room and seats himself at the slender tea-table for a cup of afternoon tea, holding his sword by his side or between his legs, that seems to me an unnecessary precaution, even when Americans are present, for many of us nowadays go about unarmed.

Except on official or formal occasions it seems a matter of questionable good taste to appear, say in a hotel restaurant, with one's breast hung with medals or with orders on one's coat or in the button-hole. Let 'em find out what a big boy am I without help from self-imposed placards seems to me to be perhaps the more modest way. The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where the worshippers jangle a bell to call the attention of the gods to their prayers or offerings, seems out of place where the god is merely the casual man in the street, in a Berlin restaurant.

At more than one dinner the soup is followed by a meat course, after which comes the fish. This does not mean that the dinners are not good. I fondly recall a dish of sauerkraut boiled in white wine and served in a pineapple. I may not give names, but the dinners of Mr. and Mrs. Fourth of December, of Mrs. Twenty-first of January, of Mr. and Mrs. Thirtieth of January, and of Mr. and Mrs. February First, and others rank very high in my gastronomic calendar. Do not imagine from what I have written that Lucullus has left no disciples in Germany. I could easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, and because we look upon some of these customs of the German as absurd is no reason for forgetting that he often, and from his stand-point rightly, looks upon us as boors. I like the Germans and I pretend to have learned very much from them. To sneer at superficial differences is to lose all profit from intercourse with other peoples. Goethe is right, "Uberall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt!" The argument is only all on our side when we are impervious to impressions and to other standards of manners and morals than our own.

"Am Ende hangen wir doch ab Von Kreaturen die wir machten"

are two lines at least from the second part of "Faust" that we can all understand.

It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that we love a title, and that we are not averse to the ornamentation of our names with pseudo and attenuated "Honorables" and "Colonels" and "Judge" and so on; and I am bound to admit the impeachment, for I blush at some of my be-colonelled and becaptained friends, and wonder at their rejoicing over such effeminate honorifics, especially those colonelcies born of clattering behind a civilian governor, on a badly ridden horse, a title which may be compared with that most attenuated title of all, that of a Texan, who when asked why he was called "colonel" replied, that he had married the widow of a colonel!

I prefer "Esqr." to "Mr." merely because it makes it easier to assort the daily mail; "Mr.," "Mrs.," and "Miss" are so easily taken for one another on an envelope, and particularly at Christmas time this more distinctly legible title avoids, the deplorable misdirection of the secrets of Santa Claus; aside from that I am happy to be addressed merely by my name, like any other sovereign.

We are, too, somewhat overexcited when foreign royalties appear among us. "What wud ye do if ye were a king an' come to this counthry?" asked Mr. Hennessy.

"Well," said Mr. Dooley, "there's wan thing I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration iv Independence. I'd be afraid I'd die laughin'."

In Germany not only are titles showered upon the populace, but it is distinctly and officially stated by what title the office-holder shall be addressed.

In a case I know, a certain lady failed to sign herself to one of the small officials working upon her estate as, let us say, "I remain very sincerely yours," or its German equivalent; whereupon the person addressed wrote and demanded that communications addressed to him should be signed in the regulation manner. A lawyer was consulted, and it was found that a similar case had been taken to the courts and decided in favor of the recipient of wounded vanity.

In hearty and manly opposition to this attitude toward life is the example of Admiral X. He had served long and gallantly, and just before he retired a friend said to him: "I hear that they're going to knight you." "By God, sir, not without a court-martial!" was the prompt reply. Indeed, things have come to such a pass in England that the offer of a knighthood to a gentleman of lineage, breeding, and real distinction, has been for years looked upon as either a joke or an insult.

Not so among my German friends; they have a ravenous appetite for these flimsy tickets of passing commendation. At many, many hospitable boards in Berlin I have been present where no left breast was barren of a medal, and where the only medal won by participation in actual warfare, belonging to one of the guests, was safely packed away in his house. And as for the titles, there is no room in a small volume like this to enumerate them all; and the women folk all carry the titles of the husband, from Frau Ober-Postassistent, Frau Regierungs Assessor, up to the Chancellor's lady, who, by the way, wears a title in her mere face and bearing. Not long ago I saw in a provincial sheet the notice of the death of a woman of eighty, who was gravely dignified by her bereaved relatives with the title, and as the relict of, a veterinary.

Upon a certain funicular at a mountain resort, where the cars pass one another up and down every twenty minutes, the conductors salute one another stiffly each time they pass.

Of the army of people with titles of Ober-Regierungsrat, Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Ober-Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimerat, who also carries the additional title of "Excellenz" with his title; Referendar, Assessor, Justizrat, Geheimer Justizrat, Gerichts-Assessor, Amtsrichter, Amtsgerichtrat, Oberamtsrichter, Landgerichtsdirector, Amtsgerichtspraesident, Geheimer Finanzrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Ober Finanzrat, Legationsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Legationsrat, Vice Konsul, Konsul, General Konsul, Commercienrat, Wirklichercommercienrat, Staatsanwalt, Staatsanwaltschaftsrat, Herr Erster Staatsanwalt, where the "Herr" is a legal part of the title; of those who must be addressed as "Excellenz," and in addition military and naval titles, and the horde of handles to names of those in the railway, postal, telegraph, street- cleaning, forestry, and other departments, one must merely throw up one's hands in despair, and bow to the inevitable disgrace of being quite unable to name this Noah's-ark procession of petty dignitaries.

In the department of post and telegraph a new order has gone forth, issued during the last few months, by which, after passing certain examinations, the employees may take the title of Ober-Postschaffner and Ober-Leitungsaufseher. After thirty years' service the postman is dignified with the title of Ober-Brieftraeger. It is difficult to understand the type of mind which is flattered by such infantile honors. At any rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long as men will work for such trumpery ends the state profits by playing upon their childish vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000 decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of these were of the three classes of the Order of the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reign of the present Emperor, in 1913, still another medal is to be struck, to be given to worthy officials and officers.

All the professions and all the trades, too, have their pharmacopoeia of tags and titles, and you will go far afield to find a German woman who is not Frau Something-or-other Schmidt, or Fischer, or Miller. Every day one hears women greeting one another as Frau Oberforstmeister, Frau Superintendent, Frau Medicinalrat, Frau Oberbergrat, Frau Apothekar, Frau Stadt-Musikdirektor, Frau Doktor Rechtsanwalt, Frau Geschaeftsfuehrer, and the like. All these titles, too, appear in the hotel registers and in all announcements in the newspapers. Even when a man dies, his title follows him to the grave, and even beyond it, in the speech of those left behind.

These uniforms and titles and small formalities do make, I admit, for orderliness and rigidity, and perhaps for contentment; since every man and woman feels that though they are below some one else on the ladder they are above others; and every day and in every company their vanity is lightly tickled by hearing their importance, small though it be, proclaimed by the mention of their titles.

It pleases the foreigners to laugh and sometimes to jeer at the universal sign of "Verboten" (Forbidden) seen all over Germany. They look upon it as the seal of an autocratic and bureaucratic government. It is nothing of the kind. The army, the bureaucracy, the autocratic Kaiser at the helm, and the landscape bestrewn with "Verboten" and "Nicht gestattet" (Not allowed), these are necessities in the case of these people. They do not know instinctively, or by training or experience, where to expectorate and where not to; where to smoke and where not to; what to put their feet on and what not to; where to walk and where not to; when to stare and when not to; when to be dignified and when to laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; how, when, or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, or how to dress properly or appropriately. The Emperor is almost the only man in Germany who knows what chaff is and when to use it.

The more you know them, the longer you live among them, the less you laugh at "Verboten." The trouble is not that there are too many of these warnings, but that there are not enough! When you see in flaring letters in the street-cars, "In alighting the left hand on the left-hand rail," when you read on the bill of fare in the dining-car brief instructions underlined, as to how to pour out your wine so that you will not spill it on the table-cloth; when you see the list of from ten to fifteen rules for passengers in railway carriages; when you see everywhere where crowds go and come, "Keep to the right"; when you see hanging on the railings of the canals that flow through Berlin a life-buoy, and hanging over it full instructions with diagrams for the rescue of the drowning; when you see over a post-box, "Aufschrift und Marke nicht vergessen" (Do not forget to stamp and address your envelope); when you see in the church entrances a tray with water and sal volatile, and the countless other directions and remedies and preventives on every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders and smile pityingly, if you do not stand and stare and then laugh outright, as I was fool enough to do at first. But you soon recover from this superficial view of matters Teutonic. In one cab I rode in I was cautioned not to expectorate, not to put my feet on the cushions, not to tap on the glass with stick or umbrella, not to open the windows, but to ask the driver to do it, and not to open the door till the auto-taxi stopped; one hardly has time to learn the rules before the journey is over.

In April, 1913, more laws are to come into effect for the street traffic. People may not walk more than three abreast; they may not swing their canes and umbrellas as they walk; they may not drag their garments in the street; they may not sing, whistle, or talk loudly in the street, nor congregate for conversation; there will follow, of course, a regulation as to the length of women's dresses to be worn in the street, and no doubt the police commissioner, an amiable bachelor, will decree that the shorter the better. All these fussy regulations are ridiculous to us, but in reality they are horrible and give one a feeling of suffocation when living in Germany. In the days when everybody rode a bicycle, each rider was obliged to pass an examination in proficiency, paid a small tax, and was given a number and a license. Women who persisted in wearing dangerous hat-pins have been ejected from public vehicles.

After April 1, 1913, no shop in Berlin can advertise or hold a bargain sale without permission of the police. The changed prices must be affixed to the goods four days before the sale for inspection by the police, and only two such sales are permitted a year, and these must take place either before February 15, or between June 15 and August 1st. All particulars of the sale must be handed to the police a week in advance. In a carriage on the Bavarian railroad, a husband who kissed and petted his tired wife was complained of by a fellow- passenger. The husband was tried, judged guilty, and fined. There was no question but that the woman was his wife; thus there is no loop-hole left for the legally curious, and thousands of male Germans hug and kiss one another on railway-station platforms who surely ought to be fined and imprisoned or deported or hanged! All this may be a relic of Roman law. Cato dismissed Marilius from the Senate because he kissed his own wife by daylight in the presence of their own daughter.

Shortly after leaving Germany, I returned from a few weeks' shooting in Scotland. We bundled out of the train onto the station platform in London. Dogs, gun-cases, cartridge-boxes, men and maid servants, trunks, bags, baskets, bunches of grouse, and the passengers seemed in a chaotic huddle of confusion. In Germany at least twenty policemen would have been needed to disentangle us. I was so torpid from having been long Teutonically cared for, that I looked on momentarily paralyzed. There was no shouting, not a harsh word that I heard; and as I was almost the last to get away, I can vouch for it that in ten minutes each had his own and was off. I had forgotten that such things could be done. I had been so long steeped in enforced orderliness, that I had forgotten that real orderliness is only born of individual self-control. I forgot that I was back among the free spirits who govern a quarter of the habitable globe and whose descendants are making America; and even if here and there one or more, and they are often recently arrived immigrants, are intoxicated by freedom and shoot or steal like drunken men; I realized that I am still an Occidental barbarian, thank God, preferring liberty, even though it is punctuated now and then with shots and screams and thefts, to official guardianship, even though I am thus saved the shooting, the screaming, and the thieving.

In the nine years ending 1910, our Fourth of July celebrations cost America in killed, 18,000; in wounded, 35,000; but even that is better than the civic throttling of the German method. It seems to be forgotten that the men who keep the world fresh with their saline vigor, love risks as they love fresh air. They should be curbed, but not strangled!

You read their history, you watch closely their manners, you prowl about among them, in their streets, their shops, their houses, their theatres; you accompany the crowds on a holiday in the trains, in the forests, in the summer resorts, at their concerts or their picnics, in their beer-gardens and restaurants, and you soon see that the orderliness is all forced upon them from without, and not due to their own knowledge of how to take care of themselves.

In a recent volume by a distinguished German prison official he writes that, after a careful study of the figures from 1882 to 1910, he has discovered that one person now living in every twelve in Germany has been convicted of some offence. Doctor Finkelnburg shows that the number of "criminals" in Germany is 3,869,000, of whom 3,060,000 are males, and 809,000 females. Every 43d boy and every 213th girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen has been punished by fine or imprisonment. This does not mean that the Germans are criminal or disorderly, but, on the contrary, it shows how absurdly petty are the violations of the law punished by fine or imprisonment.

Their whole history, from Charlemagne down until the last fifty years, 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."