Chapter VIII: Part 8

At the close of the War of Independence, four out of five Germans lived on the land, two out of three were engaged in agriculture. By 1895 the agricultural population was only 35.7 per cent. That, supported by industry and commerce, kept continually increasing. In 1895 it was 50.6 per cent.

This progress of industry and trade indicates the rise of a new class of the population, that of the capitalists. It seemed at first that their arrival would result in a dispossession of the nobility. For example, under the ancien régime the bourgeois could not acquire the property of the nobles. Toward 1880, for Eastern Prussia only, 7,086 estates of 11,065 belonged to non-nobles. They could have been acquired only with money. Capital was supplanting birth. Today even, in Prussia, five members of the Ministry, a little more than one-third, are bourgeois not enjoying the particle von.

The new dominant class encroached upon the ancient in two ways, by depriving it of its clientele and by acquiring a considerable weight in the State. "The weight of a social class" is the totality of its means of action, which it possesses on account of its numbers, its personal influence, its wealth, and the importance of the interests which it represents. The clientele of the agrarian nobility was essentially the peasants, who have continually diminished in number, the attraction of industrial and commercial employments having caused a great migration to the interior, to the factories, and the cities.

For many years this phenomenon has been disclosed by statistics and pointed out by economists and sociologists, but no remedy has been found. Today, although emigration abroad has much moderated, Germany has not labor for its tillage. It is obliged to import farm hands and even cereals. It no longer produces foodstuffs sufficient for its own support.

Moreover, the peasant who remains upon the soil is freed from the landlord, and agricultural production has become specialized--industrialized. There is the case, for instance, of that peasant woman who declared that she had not the time to wash her linen and who sent it to the steam laundry at Karlsruhe. Here is not merely an economic transformation, but a moral evolution. The agriculturist who no longer produces in order to consume but in order to sell, and who must live from the product of his sales, tries to produce as much as possible. He hires foreign labor to get from it all that he can. The impersonal relations of employer and employed replace the patriarchal traditions. Thus the land owner finds himself caught in the mechanism of the capitalistic system.

As to the "weight" of the new class, it increased prodigiously during the years following the war of 1870, thanks to the millions which the empire could invest in its industries and which allowed it to endow its commerce and its merchant marine, to complete the network of its roads, canals, and railways.

The law of concentration of capital was verified on this occasion in a striking manner. In the famous years 1871 to 1874, which the Germans call the Gründejahre, the foundation years, gigantic industrial and commercial enterprises took a spring which seemed irresistible. A Director of the Deutsche Bank, of the Dresdener Bank, the President of a company for transatlantic commerce, such as the Hamburg-American Line, or of the committee of great electric establishments, enjoyed an influence in the councils of the State far greater than that of a Baron, a Count, or a little mediatized Prince.

What was the aristocracy of birth going to do about it? Struggle desperately? It took that tack at first. Bismarck ranged himself in its support for some time. He was himself an agrarian. But he was not long in installing paper mills on his estates at Varzin. It is said that the Emperor himself possesses porcelain factories. A part of the nobility for a long time tried to adapt itself to the new method of production. It took to it awkwardly and often ended in ruin.

Freytag has described this phenomenon at its beginnings in a romance which is a chef d'oeuvre. A part of the nobility yielded, fell into the hands of the financiers, the money lenders, the managers of agricultural enterprises, sold their lands, and took refuge in the great civil, administrative and military posts. The remainder resisted as well as they could. There was antagonism between their interests and those of the capitalists, between the religious and particularist tendencies on one hand and free thought and cosmopolitanism on the other. The agrarians demanded tariff duties on agricultural products to raise the price of their foodstuffs. The industrials wanted a low cost of living in order to avoid the rise of wages and to compete with better advantage for foreign markets.

Bismarck was the target for vehement opposition when he inclined toward the party of the traders and the industrials in his colonial and tariff policy. This evolution came about 1879. For a while the great Chancellor was looked upon almost as a traitor.

Nevertheless, his view was just. Balancing the forces on the one hand by those on the other, ceding protective duties first to one side and then to the other, offsetting the advantages which he offered to one side by the prerogatives which he accorded to the other, he finally succeeded in reconciling them.

From this reconciliation of the two dominant classes has resulted the extraordinary power of Germany. The bourgeois parties have from time to time grumbled over the military appropriations, but they have always voted them. And militarism, which is the support of the aristocracy, has been placed at the service of capitalistic ambition. By the prestige of force, awakening hopes here and inspiring fears there, more than once by the help of manoeuvres of intimidation, it has become an instrument of economic conquest.

Other combinations, other reciprocal interlacings, have taken place which have given an exceptional and unique character to contemporary Germany. It is a case of social psychology of extreme interest. To describe it would require long detail. The combination of the aristocratic and military tendency with the industrial and plutocratic tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist _entrepreneur_, methodical habits of administration with the love of risk characteristic of the speculator, all this constitutes imperialism, German imperialism, distinct from every other, because to a definite object, economic conquest, it adds another, less precise, in which the moral satisfaction dear to aristocracy, the pleasure of dominating, the love of displaying force, the tendency to prove one's own superiority to one's self, play a large part.

Economic conquest has become a necessity for Germany. Transformed into an industrial State, it no longer produces its own food. Since 1885 its imports have exceeded its exports by 1,353,000,000 marks. Whence did Germany derive these 1,300,000,000 marks which were needed, good year and bad, to meet its balance of trade? It owes them to its maritime commerce and the revenue of its capital invested abroad. Its maritime commerce then must augment and must triumph over all competition. At every cost it must open for itself outlets for its industrial products in order to buy foodstuffs which it does not produce sufficiently. If not, famine.

Let us see now how the complicated play of all these social forces and the effect of this economic situation have been embodied in formulas, what has been its intellectual expression.

This is no idle question, for men have always claimed to be guided by ideas, and generally they are, but they rarely know where their ideas come from or in what they consist. Without intellectual expression imperialism would not have extended to all the classes of society. The passion of economic conquest did not prevail throughout the whole of Germany. The bourgeois in the Liberal provinces, the corps of officers, the corps of teachers, the clergy were refractory to it. This direct form of imperialism does not seduce them. Not everybody can see his country and the universe through the eyes of an oligarch of high finance. A doctrine works with power when it appeals to instincts, when it awakens collective emotions, diverse enough in themselves, and joins them to each other with an appearance of logical deduction. It is not indispensable, but it is useful that it should borrow the language of the day. In the mediaeval epoch this language was religious. Beginning with the seventeenth century it was metaphysical. In our own time it is a scientific language set off by Greek words.

If the German philosophies of the second half of the nineteenth century are considered, there are not many of them that pass beyond the limit of the school. They are honest, scholarly productions elaborated by men who have read much, of whom some, like Wundt, are eminent specialists, but who have not conquered either their subjects or their readers. One feels that they are not of their century.

It is not from them, it is not from Eucken, the pleasant popularizer, it is not from Windelbund or Ostwald that the cultivated public sought the direction for its thought. To satisfy the need of general ideas which was everywhere felt, associations were formed, churches with or without God, of which a very important one was the "Monistenbund," in which Haeckel exploited his materialism transformed into a sort of biological pantheism.

But it was outside of the associations and outside of the school that the flame of creative genius burned brightly. The man of the last generation was Nietzsche. That his thought has been perverted by his interpreters there is no doubt. They have taken this eagle who gazed unblinded at the sun and exhibited him to the young people in all sorts of philosophic rôles for the benefit of the industrial and military coalition. Nietzsche depicted in lines of fire the resurrection of heroism, his vision of the superman was that of an ardent soul, steeled by sufferings, meditating a tragic conception of life with serenity, and in his solitary individualism surmounting the infirmity of man and his own by the insistent will to eternal ascension.

He was made the apostle of brute force, a sort of Messiah of the "struggle for life." Moreover, he was soon put one side and Gobineau was revived. He also, who if he did not have genius had wit, would have been surprised and hardly flattered perhaps by the rôle which they made him play. The dolichocephalic (long-skulled) blonde whom he celebrated was not exactly the one whom we are now judging by his works, but at least he proclaimed the superiority of the German race.

His doctrine was the centre around which were gathered a complete ensemble of dogmas and of very diverse theories, whose connected thread it is not easy to discover when it is searched for logically, but appears quite distinctly when not reason, but reasons, are demanded. The reasons are found in the need of justifying in theory the economic and military imperialism, born as we have seen from conditions of fact and from very practical motives.

I do not pretend that it was calculated, nor that the optimates made express requisition of the naturalists, economists, and historians and sociologists and moralists to provide an imperialistic philosophy for the use of adult and normal dolichocephalous blondes. But there certainly was a coincidence. It may have been due to the influence of what is called a _milieu ambiant_, that of the commercial and military party. The authors of the doctrine lived in a special atmosphere. Their intellect was there formed--or deformed--their work consisted in gathering facts, inventing reasonings, elaborating formulas, so as to subject natural science, history and morality to the service of that keen will for hegemony which was in Germany the common characteristic and was the connecting link between the ancient and the new directing class.

To convince one that this is so, it is enough to arrange the works of the pan-Germanists in a series passing from the simplest to the most complicated. The dates are of no importance. We might put at one of the extremes the works of the Prussian General, von Bernhardi, and at the other the gigantic lucubration of a famous pan-German zealot, a neophite, a convert, almost a deserter, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

_Prof. Millioud examines at some length and acutely the tendencies and teachings of von Bernhardi, now familiar to American readers, sums up the work of the philosophers of minor rank and turns to Mr. Chamberlain._

With Mr. Chamberlain the thesis of vital competition, the morality of force, the judgment of history against little nations, the civilizing mission imposed upon greater Germany by its very greatness, by its economic, scientific and artistic superiority, everything tends to the glorification of the German, to his duty to govern the whole world which he feels so imperatively and which he accepts with such a noble simplicity. His work is not easily summarized, not only because it counts 1,379 pages and two appendices, but because all is in everything, and everything in the universe is also in Mr. Chamberlain's book. And the German has made everything. Not indeed the world; that he has only remade and is about to remake. But he has a way of remaking so creative that one might say that without him the Creator Himself would be a bit embarrassed. He has gathered to himself alone the heritage of Greece and Rome as far as it was worth anything. From the year 1200 to the year 1800 he founded, ripened, and saved a new civilization several times over. The mother of our sciences and our arts, Italy, is Germanic; the great architecture of the Middle Ages is Germanic; the true interpretation of Christianity, the true conception of art, the true social economy, the love of nature, the sense of individuality, the exploration of the world and of the soul, the great reawakenings of conscience, all the great flashes of thought are Germanic; everything is Germanic, except you and me, perhaps; so much the worse for me and so much the worse for you. After this book, the success of which has been prodigious, it would truly seem that there is nothing more to say. Germanic thought has appropriated the universe to itself. It only remained for the German sword to complete the work. It is drawn!

I have tried to describe the modifications, or rather the successive additions, by which the elementary themes disclosing economic, political, and military appetites in the directing class have been disguised as theories of biology, history, political economy, sociology, and morality. It would take another study or another article to show how science was perverted to such ends. The severity of methods, rigor in the determination of facts, precision in reasoning, prudence in generalization, serene impartiality and objectivity in verification, in a word the scientific spirit, cannot be bent to so many pleasant compromises without sacrificing a great part of its dignity and its title to respect.

This has been a singular and melancholy event for those of us who have been raised in respect for German science and in admiration for its methods, as well as for its discoveries. Certainly, from Liebig to Roentgen and to Behring, from Kant to Wundt, Germany has counted many distinguished pioneers. In the matter of fecund originality, however, and creative inspiration, Italy and France have always equaled, if not surpassed, her. She has had no Marconi, no Pasteur or Poincaré, no Carrel.

What we have received from her so long that it has become almost a matter of instinct is less dazzling flashes than an equal and constant light. And the savants, the university men who bring to us anthropological romances, history stuffed with legends and personal prejudices, sociology constructed in contempt of the facts!

In these later days we have seen all these joining under the guidance of their most illustrious members to address the civilized nations in an appeal in which by virtue of their quality as savants they undertook to pronounce upon facts which they don't understand, to deny those which they cannot help understanding, and solemnly to declare that it is not true that Germany has violated the neutrality of the territory of Belgium. For proof of this, nothing but their word of honor. Do they take us for those young gentlemen who said to Monge, "Professor, give us your word of honor that this theorem is true and we will excuse you from the demonstration of it"?

Fully to explain the rôle of the intellectual savants and university men in the formation of the ideology of caste which prevails among the Germans it would be necessary to recite the history of instruction in Germany, not such as Davis and Paulson have written it, but such as it actually is under the influence of institutions and programmes--I mean the moral history of instruction.

The great Frederick was wont to cry, "I commence by taking; afterward I shall always have pedants enough to establish my rights." Pedants or not, the members of the teaching corps of every grade in Germany are a wheel of the State, their mission is to form not men, but Germans, to inculcate the national idea. Their views have penetrated even to the common people.

Germany receives a double education--that of the school and that of the barracks. The spirit of these two institutions is the same, and their influence, which has been exercised since 1848 in opposition to humanitarian and internationalist ideas, has encountered no serious obstacles, for it went readily with certain old instincts which it was not difficult to reawaken and which general circumstances favored.

"Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam," said Caesar, speaking of the Germans. Pillage brings no shame. This desire of gain, this positive and realistic tendency is one of the motives which the brusque and prodigious economic expansion of Germany has promoted in the most efficient manner.

This total assimilation of a people of 70,000,000 of souls by an aristocratic, almost a feudal, directing class, a combination of plutocrats and militarists, is in reality a most curious phenomenon, more than curious, in a sense grandiose, and in any case full of suggestions and menaces.

Surrender of body and soul, confidence almost religious, enthusiastic faith, the directing class has conquered everything within in order to conquer everything without. Now it stakes everything upon the cast of the dice. I have not undertaken to decide whether it is just or not. The event will determine whether it is genius or madness.

THE LAND OF MAETERLINCK

By Alfred Sutro

[From King Albert's Book.]

I have translated many books of Maeterlinck's; I have wandered with him among the canals of Bruges and the fragrant gardens of Ghent; I have seen the places where he dreamed of Pelléas and Mélisande, and the hives of the bees he loved. Through him I learned to know Belgium, today all the world knows. Her cities are laid waste now and her people scattered, but her people will return and rebuild the cities, and the enemy will be dust. The day will come when the war will be far distant, a thing of the past, remote, forgotten, but never, while men endure or heroism counts, will it be forgotten what the Belgians did for Liberty's sake and for the sake of Albert, their King.

America and Prohibition Russia

Two Mustard Seeds of Reform Carried From This Land to the Steppes

By Isabel F. Hapgood

When Russia recently abolished the sale of liquor, first in the shops run as a Government monopoly, and, after a brief experience of the beneficent results, in the restaurants and clubs as well, an astonished and admiring world recognized the measure as one of the greatest events in the moral history of a nation. It takes rank with the reforms of Peter the Great. It almost casts into the shade the emancipation of the serfs.

There has always existed in Russia a strong party which severely disapproved of Peter precisely because he forced "Western" ideas upon them. Their idea has always been that Russia would have developed a far higher degree of genuine culture and far more precious spiritual qualities had she been left to the promptings of her own genius and its "healthy, natural" development. And there are, indubitably, persons scattered through the vast Russian Empire who entertain parallel opinions with regard to the total prohibition of liquor just effected, and with regard to the projected change in the calendar now assumed to be imminent. I trust that I shall not increase their numbers to dangerous proportions if I call attention to the fact that these reforms have also, like Peter the Great's ideas, been imported from the West--from the Far West, the United States. I am sure my fellow-countrymen will be gratified to learn the truth, and I cheerfully accept the risk, and assume that Russia will, in all probability, remain ignorant of my interference!

It is true that we do not have actual, effective prohibition anywhere here in America, and that we do not seem to be within measurable distance of such an achievement; that Russia has distanced us again in this, just as she distanced us by emancipating her serfs, without a war, before we emancipated our slaves, with the aid of a war. But we have supplied the scriptural mustard seed in the case of prohibition in Russia, and have either furnished the seed for the change in the calendar, or, at any rate, have provided elements that have hastened its growth to a very remarkable degree.

Mustard seed No. 1 was carried over from the United States in the Autumn of 1887 and sown on the good ground of the late Count Tolstoy, and other noble men, whence--as results show--it spread abroad with a swiftness suggestive rather of the proverbial weed than of the fair flower its blossoming has shown it to be.

In the Autumn of 1886 Dr. Peter Semyonovitch Alexyeeff of Moscow, accompanied by his wife, sailed for Canada and the United States for the purpose of inspecting the hospitals, prisons, and elementary schools; and they came for the Winter because some parts of Canada during that season possess a climate similar to that of Central Russia, while in other parts the climates are identical. In fact, Canada is the only country in the world where the climatic conditions are at all analogous. The construction of new hospitals, the adaptation of already existing buildings for hospital use, the internal arrangement, and the perfection of their internal machinery had long been matters of deep interest to Dr. Alexyeeff.

Germany and France, with climates so different from that of Russia, could not furnish him with the information available in North America, where, in his opinion, the habits and conditions of existence--such important factors in matters connected with hospitals and invalids--also differ less from those of Russia than do the general surroundings in the countries of the Continent. After visiting the principal cities of Canada and the United States from Quebec to Vancouver, and from Boston to Washington, (some of them more than once,) Dr. Alexyeeff arrived at the conclusion that the hospitals of the United States were better built and much better administered than those of London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.

Naturally, no one could spend nine months in investigating hospitals and prisons in this country without coming in contact with the liquor problem. Moreover, Dr. Alexyeeff was a wideawake man, who took an interest not only in all matters connected with his profession, but in very many outside of it. He was, also, a man of very lofty character. His wife once wrote me concerning him somewhat as follows: "He walks, habitually, on such moral heights, in such a rarefied spiritual atmosphere, that I, the daughter of an English clergyman, reared accordingly, and myself (as you know) deeply in sympathy with it, find difficulty in following him." Obviously, he was precisely the man to appreciate the temperance movement, and to carry it to its logical conclusion. In the preface to a volume, "About America," which he published in Moscow in 1888, he writes:

Neither the wonders of wild nature in the Rocky Mountains nor
the menacing might and grandeur of Niagara produce such an
impression on a Russian as the success of the fight with
drunkenness--the temperance movement--and the successful
development, in all classes of society, of morality and the
strict application of practical morals.

He did not confine himself to this brief, general statement. He wrote in praise of temperance, of prohibition, for learned Russian societies. Then he wrote a book entitled "Concerning Drunkenness." The Censor's permit to publish is dated March 29, (April 10,) 1887. It was published by the management of the magazine, Russkaya Mysl, (Russian Thought,) which may indicate that it had first appeared in that monthly as a series of articles, though I have not been able to verify the fact. The book may have been published promptly, or at least the article from the medical magazine may have been published in the cheap form (costing two or three cents) used by the semi-commercial, semi-philanthropic firm "Posrednik," which may be rendered "Middleman" or "Mediator," designed for the dissemination of good and useful reading among the masses.

At any rate, "Concerning Drunkenness" appeared at the price of one ruble (about fifty cents) in 1891, prefaced by a dissertation by Count Tolstoy, "Why Do People Stupefy Themselves?" specially written for this occasion, as Dr. Alexyeeff told me. (It has been translated under the title of "Alcohol and Tobacco," London, and published without any indication that Dr. Alexyeeff inspired it.)

In 1896 a second edition, revised and enlarged, was published, also in Moscow; and to this the author added a list of helpful publications and a summary bibliography, which included books issued in various foreign countries, ranging in number from 705 for Great Britain and Colonies, 142 for the United States, 247 for Germany, 124 for ten other countries combined, (up to 1885 in all these cases,) to ten for Russia. Of these ten, four are in Latin, four in German, one is in Swedish and one in Russian--the latter, evidently, an article republished from The Medical News. On the whole, a list practically non-existent, so far as Russia was concerned!

Dr. Alexyeeff had discovered a field of endeavor as virgin as the unplowed steppe. Only scientists desperately hard up for an unusual topic for a strictly academic discussion and recklessly willing to risk incurring universal unpopularity would have dreamed of unearthing those volumes. He promptly aroused Count Tolstoy's interest in the subject of temperance, which in this case signified prohibition, since the Count in his preface to Dr. Alexyeeff's book (dated July 10-22, 1890,) treated liquor on the same basis as tobacco, which he had totally abjured at least two years previously. With Tolstoy, to become convinced that a reform was desirable was, as all the world knows, to become an ardent propagandist of that reform. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Alexyeeff, seconded by those of Tolstoy, temperance began to attract attention in Russia, temperance societies were formed, and have been steadily increasing ever since in numbers and activity.

Eventually Mr. Tchelisheff arrived on the scene with his splendid vital force and practical solutions of the financial and other problems (or suggestions for them) that arise from prohibition, (especially when a Government monopoly and revenue are concerned,) which he most strenuously advocated when Mayor of Samara, as representative in the Duma--everywhere, in fact, where he could obtain a hearing, willing or unwilling, up to the Emperor Nicholas himself. And the Emperor showed that he was equal to the magnificent opportunity, and joined hands with the former peasant in aiding his country.

In an interview published by THE TIMES a while ago Mr. Tchelisheff mentions that his attention was first drawn to the subject of the evils of drunkenness by a book which he saw a muzhik reading. Judging from the point at which he inserts that mention into his outline sketch of his career (previous to the great famine which he--erroneously--assigns to the "end of the '80s," but which came in 1891) his interest was aroused precisely at the time when Dr. Alexyeeff's first utterances may be assumed to have seen the light of print. At any rate, it is an admitted fact that Dr. Alexyeeff carried to Russia and to Tolstoy from the United States the idea and inspiration which has borne such wonderful fruit in the abolition of the liquor traffic "forever," as the Imperial ukase runs.

Mr. Tchelisheff is a noteworthy figure in history accordingly, but Dr. Alexyeeff should not be forgotten. When I made his acquaintance at Count Tolstoy's, in Moscow, he had just requested (and obtained) a detail of service in Tchita, Trans-Baikal Province, Siberia, as physician to the political exiles there, thinking the region would repay study from many points of view, in his leisure hours. The preface to the first edition of his book "Concerning Drunkenness" is dated "July, 1899, Tchita," and from Tchita I received my copy from him. In that preface he states the scope of his book in a way which confirms my conviction that Mr. Tchelisheff was first stirred to interest, and in the end aroused to action, by the United States, via Dr. Alexyeeff. He writes:

The battle which in all ages has been waged against
drunkenness has been confined hitherto almost exclusively to
the realms of medicine and ethics; the social part of the
question is only just beginning to be worked out, and has
hardly as yet won the rights of citizenship, and down to our
own day there have been no serious legal measures adopted for
the battle with drunkenness.

Therefore, he omits the legal aspects of the matter in his book and confines himself to an attempt at popularizing the information scattered in divers individual books, "borrowing everything which can lead to the ultimate goal--the extermination of the evil caused by the use of spirituous drinks." He continues:

Public opinion has nowhere as yet, even in the lands where
considerable success has attended the war on drunkenness,
ripened sufficiently a desire to give, even incompletely, a
summary of the information about that battle, and make my
fellow-countrymen acquainted with a matter still little known
in Russia, so I am prompted to write what follows.

The second edition of this book, with the surprising list of Russian treatises on drunkenness to which I have already alluded, is dated "June, 1895, Riga," where he lived after his return from Siberia, as an official of the Government medical service, until his death in August, 1913. During the stay in Tchita of the Alexyeeffs, the present Emperor (then the heir,) passed through it, on his way home (from the trip to India and Japan which came so near terminating fatally in the latter country) after having officially opened work upon the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. A formal reception and ceremonies were organized in Tchita; and I allude to the matter because of a curious detail mentioned in a letter to me by Mrs. Alexyeeff. Foreigners have very queer ideas, she said, as to the position and treatment of the political exiles in Siberia; some of the Tchita exiles served as heads of the committees for welcoming the heir, and he shook hands with them and treated them exactly as he treated the Governor General of the Province.

Whether it was his admiration for the American temperance movement which influenced Dr. Alexyeeff's views on everything American, I cannot say. But, assuredly, not many foreign visitors have pronounced upon our country such a panegyric as is contained in the preface to his "Across America." He writes:

Conscientious fulfillment of every duty, industry, energy, and
moral purity are the typical qualities of the genuine
American. It is difficult to form any idea of the wide
development of philanthropy, the significance of religion, and
the practical application to life of ethical principles, the
application of moral obligations in business, the upright,
God-fearing life of the Americans, unless one has lived among
them. They have neither prostitution, foundling hospitals, nor
hospitals for venereal diseases. A European is not accustomed
to see empty prisons and hospitals in densely settled
localities--to come upon cities where there is nothing for the
police, the Judges, and the doctors to do he finds startling.
They have attained the height where priests, pastors,
preachers, and teachers are rarely obliged to contend with
indifference....

After a trip to America it would be difficult to return an
atheist--you are more likely to come back in a religious frame
of mind.... Idleness and luxury are not among the
distinguishing characteristics of the descendants of the
Puritans.... In the light, transparent atmosphere of the
States, simplicity, the cheerful, alert spirit infects the
foreigner, makes him a more frank, trustful, optimistic
warrior for the truth, and causes him to forget what it means
to be downcast in spirit, or what spleen and hypochondria are.

Until he died, in Siberia, in Russia, everywhere, Dr. Alexyeeff worked for temperance. He was enthusiastic about it when I saw him and his wife in England, in 1907.

Mr. Tchelisheff having been aroused to interest, theoretically, by America, via Dr. Alexyeeff, as is fairly proven, it was only natural that he should proceed to make the personal observations on the practical, social side of drunkenness which he mentions in his Times interview. He noticed, during the great famine of 1891, that it was the drunkards who had squandered their grain and pawned their possessions to the keepers of the dramshops who robbed other men's granaries and houses, burned, rioted, and murdered; while the men who did not drink had plenty of food and grain to hold out. We are informed from Russia that even during its still brief reign prohibition has resulted in remarkable improvement in health, living conditions, and bank accounts.

Mr. Tchelisheff is, as I have said, a noteworthy figure in history. He would be a remarkable figure in any land; but for those who are not acquainted with Russia, the rise of a man born a peasant, educated solely by his own efforts on stray newspapers and books which fell in his way in his schoolless village, and absolutely lacking in money or influence, ("svyazi"--connections, is the Russian version of "pull,") to the position of multi-millionaire and co-worker with the Emperor, is amazing almost beyond belief. In reality, it is as simple as the rise of an American newsboy, of an Edison or a Carnegie to a position of power in the United States. Fate, circumstances, as well as their own personality are the factors in all these cases; and in every similar case.

Moreover, there is in Russia no eternally impassable barrier of caste, but there is a genuine democracy which is not easy to define, but is very easily felt. For instance, the title of "Prince," (to which, unlike that of "Count" or "Baron"--conferrable--one must be born, runs the rule, with exceptions for such national heroes as Suvaroff,) counts for nothing or approximately that, unless its owner possesses, in addition, the wealth, character, learning or other characteristics which would render him a man of mark without it.

There are other interesting instances of peasants who have risen high in Russia, and Mr. Tchelisheff is their worthy successor. The founder of the great silversmiths' firm of Ovtchinnikoff was a serf. His successors have made it their rule, "out of gratitude to God," to maintain and educate a certain number of poor boys, who, when their intellectual and technical training is completed, are free to remain with the firm as valued artists or to go forth independently. When the Emperor Alexander II. celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne, all the Sovereigns of Europe sent him magnificent presents. These are assembled in his library, at the Winter Palace, Petrograd; and in the centre--accorded that place by the Russians with equal good feeling, good taste, and justice--is a large group in solid silver, representing a huge mass of rock upon whose pinnacles stand figures representing the different parts of the empire--Little Russia, Siberia, and so forth. The inscription reads: "To the Tzar-Liberator from the Liberated Serf." It was made by the Ovtchinnikoffs and presented by another ex-serf, who had become a millionaire railway magnate.

Mustard Seed No. 2 from America to Russia falls into a somewhat different category. It more nearly resembles one of those grains of antique wheat found in a tomb and sprouting vigorously when finally planted in congenial, helpful soil. I trust that my comparison may not be regarded as disrespectful. One could not, willingly, be disrespectful to the calendar, any more than to the thermometer!

Russia, by adhering to the Julian Calendar and refusing to adopt the Gregorian, has now fallen thirteen days behind the rest of the world. It falls behind about a day for every century. There are several reasons why Russia has not, up to now, remedied the serious inconvenience caused by this conflict of dates. One is--the Gregorian Calendar is Roman Catholic, and named after a Pope. It is, also, inaccurate. Worst of all, the rectification might--almost infallibly would, under ordinary circumstances--cause trouble at the outset, especially in one incalculably important direction.

Russian scientists long ago worked out a new calendar far more accurate than the Gregorian for thousands of years, and when the change is made that calendar will be adopted. The fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that all the people whose saints' days must inevitably be skipped for the first year in the process of rectification will inevitably feel that they are being robbed of their guardian angels, that they are "orphans"--a mournful word greatly beloved of the Russian masses under multiform circumstances, both material and spiritual--and orphaned in a peculiarly distressing and irrevocable way. They might even feel when their saints' days came around quite correctly the next year that some spurious adventurer--Angel of Darkness--was being foisted upon them.

Fanatics and professional mischief-makers would certainly seize with avidity upon such a godsend of a chance, unparalleled since the days of Peter the Great's father, when the Patriarch Nikon had the errors of the copyists in the Scriptures and church service books corrected. But the present war has fused all parties, united all hearts in patriotism, loyalty to, and confidence in their Emperor and created a fervid inclination amounting to enthusiasm to accept even the most drastic reforms he may make cheerfully, unquestionably, as for the good of the fatherland.

On the matter of the calendar reform America has for many years past been exerting a steadily increasing influence. During the past twenty years the steady flow of immigrants from Russia and other countries belonging to the Orthodox Catholic Church of the East, (Greco-Russian,) has increased to a great volume, and it seems destined to attain still greater proportions when the war is over. These people are obliged to work and keep holiday by the Gregorian calendar and to worship by the Julian. This entails hardships.

For example, a devout Russian who has been forced to remain idle on our Christmas and New Year's Days must sacrifice his pay--sometimes risk or lose his job--if he wishes to observe the feasts of his own church. A reform of the calendar would be hailed with joy by innumerable such immigrants, who have been over here long enough to consider calmly the practical aspects of a temporary dislocation of saints' days. The ecclesiastical authorities in this country have frequently protested, in print, both here and in Russia, and I have been informed that the Holy Synod has been appealed to, more than once, to induce it to cast its influence into the balance with that of the scientists and the governmental authorities, who have been discussing the matter for years past, and hesitating over the probable consequences of action--a case of peasant joining hands with the rulers of Russia, once more like Mr. Tchelisheff and the Emperor Nicholas--or the people of the United States and the President--to secure a needed reform!

And these same peasant-immigrants in America have, without the shadow of a doubt, already written back to their relatives and friends in the old country--and very frequently--about the difficulties of the antiquated Julian calendar, and these, in turn, can disseminate common sense about the change in a way which the Government, aided by the Holy Synod and the explanations of home-staying parish priests, unaided, could never effect. When the fitting time arrives, perhaps the Russian Government will avail itself of just this argument, among others--the welfare of friends in distant America. There has never been a propitious time in Russia to make that calendar reform since the reign of Peter the Great until now. And America may fairly be said to have brought from its dark hiding place the mustard seed which has been trying so long to germinate, and imparted to it a vivifying impulse.

THE MOTHER'S SONG.

By CECILIA REYNOLDS ROBERTSON.

Hush, oh, my baby, your father's a soldier,
He's off to the war, and we've nothing to eat.
And the glory is neither for you nor for me,
With the cockleburr crushing the wheat.

Little boy baby, look well on your mother;
Some day you may ask why she bore you at all;
For the trenches are foul with the blood and the wallow,
And the bayonet is sharp for your fall.

Rest, rosy limbs, and blue eyes and gold lashes--
Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say!
Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom,
That--keeps you alive for the fray.

Sleep, oh, my man child, and smile in your sleeping,
But the gun has been fashioned to lay in your hand,
And your life blood flows smooth in your fair little body
The better to water and plenish the land!

Pan-American Relations As Affected by the War

Consequences of the European Conflict on Future Commerce Between the United States and Latin America

By Huntington Wilson,

_Formerly Assistant Secretary of State_.

I.

A study of the effects of the war upon our relations with the other republics of this hemisphere involves political, commercial, financial and strategic elements of far-reaching scope and much complexity. The situation presents an opportunity. It offers a lesson even more vital than the opportunity. The political considerations are most relevant to the lesson; and the final text of the lesson will be the result of the war. The economic opportunity is already upon us, definite and clear. It will not wait. It must be grasped without delay and may therefore be first discussed.

There is something repellent in counting our advantages under the shadow of so great a tragedy but we must try to be as practical as those who are fond of accusing us of materialism. Does any one think that the steam-roller of admirably organized and Government-fostered German competition would pause if we lay in the road; that if we received a check, Anglo-Saxon cousinship and fair play would always mitigate British competition; or that then not a single European merchant in South America would ever again use scorn and detraction against our goods, or encourage, through influence with the press, prejudice due to "Yankee peril" nonsense? In short, is it likely that all our competitors would suddenly love us just because we were in trouble? No, things are not as they should be and meanwhile must be dealt with as they are.

There used to be apparently very little hope of our shaking the tree and gathering the golden fruit of foreign enterprise unless forced to it by the collapse, through dire hard times, of the wonderful home market which has made spoiled children of our manufacturers. Now comes this war. It forces upon us a wonderful, a unique opportunity to gain and hold our proper place in the finance, trade, and enterprise of Latin America. The richness of the field is often exaggerated, but its cultivation is certainly worth the effort of men of foresight.

What are we going to do about it? This is the question; for if American business men do not do their part the ultimate effect of the war upon our economic interests in this part of the world will be unimportant. We must not be like the young gold miners who were looking exclusively for large nuggets with handles. We must go at it seriously and scientifically and solidly, not superficially, casually, and opportunistically. We must begin with the earnest intention of continuing our efforts for all time.

An enthusiastic commercial spasm will be worth nothing. There have got to be real efforts, real hard work, the expenditure of money for future and not merely immediate profits, a cheerful readiness to discard old and cherished methods, a new adaptability, a new painstaking attention to details. There has got to be serious study of foreign countries and keen interest in our relations to them. Without all this, mailing catalogues, (usually in English,) banquets and speeches and organizations will take us nowhere.

American business men are bestirring themselves. They know that we need ships to carry our goods advantageously, and banks for the favorable financing of our trade. They should be able to compel our Government's support where needful, as in a ship subsidy or a limited guarantee of reasonable profit to American investment in ships. In connection with our efforts at Caribbean commerce, as another instance, they should be able to get a flexible sliding scale tariff provision passed by Congress, so that, in dealing with the countries whose coffee or other special products we buy, we could induce them to give us for our exports reciprocal advantages over our competitors. Indeed, a kind of Caribbean tariff union might well be feasible and desirable.

So long ago as last August the British Government sent all over the world for samples and specifications of German goods which their manufacturers might contrive to displace. We should take corresponding action in regard to the goods of our competitors. Our manufacturers should be reconciled to sending to find out what each market wants instead of asking a population to take or leave what we make. Our commercial campaign should include the effort to replace goods from one belligerent country formerly handled by local merchants from another belligerent country, such as British goods previously sold through the German houses which so abound in these countries.

Good men from small countries without political significance in world-politics already make their influence felt as employes of foreign Governments and as merchants in foreign countries. The war may set free many more men and send them about the world to work for their own interests, for the country they most believe in, and perhaps ultimately for an adopted country. International commerce must have its courtiers, and the good will of all such men should also be reckoned with. They spread friendship or prejudice against us. Many of them are importers and will push our goods or some one else's according to the manner in which we deal with them.

American manufacturers are doubtless weary of being told that they pack badly, that they are niggardly about credits, that they do not send enough or sufficiently qualified representatives, that they are careless of details, and so on. Still, before mentioning some further particular steps that should be taken, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that these same old faults are, and until corrected must remain, the chief detriments to our foreign trade.

In some of the republics there is a real disposition to deal with us; in others there is a preference for Europe. Now, as to many goods, they must deal with us or go without, although I am informed that a German firm, for example, has got word to its clients in these countries that it is prepared to fill orders via Copenhagen. If we think that our competitors have gone entirely or permanently out of business we shall be ridiculously and sadly disappointed. We shall be on trial, and if our exporters make good they will find a conservative disposition to continue to buy from us.

In the effort it is important to remember that there is much to live down in criticism of methods of the past. One Latin-American gentleman, an enthusiast for American commerce, exclaimed to me in despair: "Son hombres capazes de poner una hacha Collins con vidrios para ventanas," which means: "they (the American exporters) are capable of packing a Collins hatchet with window glass." Others told me how leading firms always stamped their letters for domestic and not foreign postage. The office boy simply would not learn geography. Nobody minded paying the deficit, but through local red tape this seeming trifle sometimes caused two or even three weeks' delay in the delivery of important letters.

Certain of our strongest firms have been calmly ignoring shipping directions. What did they care if the packages had to cross the Andes on mule back, and if mules could only carry packages of a certain size and weight? What did they care if the duty remission for materials on some Government contract, or the customs classification of a shipment, depended on adherence to specific directions? I could multiply examples of the most amazing casualness and careless disregard, of bad packing, of ungenerous credit, which have enraged the importer.

A European merchant, many years established in a South American city, and knowing the community, has been selling pianos in this way: The manufacturer would quote him a price and deliver the piano, giving him long credit at an ordinary rate of interest. The merchant would finally sell the piano on the installment plan, receiving interest at a higher rate on the deferred payments, the merchant trusting the buyer, the manufacturer trusting the merchant, both thus making good profits, and the purchaser being accommodated. This man found the American manufacturer entirely unwilling to deal in this way.

European houses on the spot, whether independent or financed by large home houses, give credits for as long, sometimes, as a year. They would not continue to do so if they lost by doing it. Often this fits the customs of the local domestic trade. In one country the local retailer is expected to be paid within eighteen months. Naturally, our exporters' demand for "cash down on receipt of documents," even when the customer is well vouched for, does not appeal to him.

He prefers to get long credit from a European house, and pay interest for it, rather than to borrow from his bank at high interest or sink his own capital to pay for American goods, long before he gets them, their price plus the profit of a commission house. Indeed, he is generally dissatisfied with the methods of American export trade as now conducted, which is almost exclusively through commission houses. These, it seems, might become more efficient through organization and more aggressive and scientific methods.

On the other hand, the export trade of certain of the big combinations is beginning to be pushed with commendable zeal and efficiency. Trade at large, to reach its greatest volume, must include the pushing of smaller lines of goods. These smaller lines, in the aggregate, would reach considerable sums, and it does not appear that there have hitherto existed efficient agencies for their marketing. To hold Latin-American trade we must equal our competitors in liberality of credits, in representation on the spot, and in other facilities.

There is no doubt that more American merchants resident in the trade centres would give valuable impetus to our commerce. Even our commission houses operating on the spot are so few that in handling many lines there is the greatest danger of their sacrificing the building up of a steady trade to the opportunities of unduly heavy profits now and then, and so damaging our general commercial interests. Then we must send many commercial travelers.

Just here, however, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that Americans sent to these countries to do business must above all be men of agreeable manners. In these countries many quite unworthy people have these: so a good man who lacks them is likely to be badly misjudged. They should have sympathetic personality and sufficient education, besides being men of sobriety and good character, and should be able to speak the language of the country.

All this will be expensive, but non-competing firms might join in sending men, or competing firms might, it is hoped, be guaranteed against the terrors of the Sherman law in order to join in sending a corps of representatives upon some basis of division of the field or the profits. Combination is even more necessary abroad to put forth the nation's strength in world competition than it is for efficiency at home. These men would be students and salesmen, and perhaps future merchants who would settle in these countries and emulate the patriotic groups of resident foreigners who in so many places help to form an atmosphere favorable to their countries' interests.

They would work to replace with our goods those now shut off by the war, but also to introduce dozens of lines of American products which are now comparatively hard to find in these markets. A number of strong firms might join to establish commercial houses or selling agencies in trade centres of certain groups of countries. Commission houses might do the same if they carried samples and instructed their clients in packing, credits, &c., but in each case there should be American houses on the spot which would carry general lines and supply to the eye that visible evidence of the goods themselves which is such a valuable form of advertisement.