Germany and the Germans Part 13

In Berlin particularly, where there are some thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty thousand unregistered women devoting themselves to the seemingly incompatible ends of rapidly acc.u.mulating gold while frantically pursuing pleasure, there is an amount of immorality unequalled in any capital in Europe. In the whole German Empire the average of illegitimacy is ten per cent. but in Berlin the average for the last few years is twenty per cent. Out of every five children born in Berlin each year one is illegitimate! It is questionable whether the increasing demands of the army and navy require such laxity of moral methods in providing therefor.

There is, however, a state church in Germany with its head in Berlin, and no doubt we may safely leave this matter in these better hands than ours.

I beg to say that in mentioning this subject I am quoting unprejudiced scientific investigators, who, I may say, agree, without a dissenting voice of importance, that Berlin has become the cla.s.sical problem along such lines. In the endeavor to compete with the gayeties elsewhere, a laxity has been encouraged and permitted that has won for Berlin in the last ten years, an unrivalled position as a purveyor of after-dark pleasures. Berlin not only produces a disproportionate number of such people as Diotrephes, in manners, but also a veritable horde of those who are like unto the son of Bosor.

After the sheltered home life and the severe discipline of the higher schools, a German youth is permitted a freedom unknown to us at the university. There is no record kept of how or where he spends his time. He matriculates at one or another of the universities, and for three, four, or, in the case of medical students, five years, he is free to work or not to work, as he pleases.

There are, however, three factors that serve as bit and reins to keep him in order. The final examination is severe, thorough, and cannot be pa.s.sed successfully by mere cramming; very few of the students have incomes which permit of a great range of dissipation; and not to pa.s.s the examination is a terrible defeat in life, which cuts a man off from further progress and leaves him disgraced.

These are forces that count, and which prevail to keep all but the least serious within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that overrides such considerations.

We in America suffer from a superabundance of men of aleatory dispositions, men who love to play cards with the devil, who rejoice to wager their future, their reputation, their lives, against the world. I admit a sneaking fondness for them. They are a great a.s.set, and a new country needs them, but if we have too many, Germany has too few. They are forever crying out in Germany for another Bismarck. Whenever in political matters, in foreign affairs, even in their religious controversies, things go wrong, men lift their hands and eyes to heaven and say, "How different if Bismarck were here!" Bismarck and two of his predecessors as nation-builders were not afraid to throw dice with the world, and what "the land of d.a.m.ned professors" could not do, they did.

When the young men from the Gymnasium come into the freedom of university life, they toss their heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh long and loud at the Philistine, but just as every German climax is incomplete without tears, so they too are soon singing: "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten da.s.s ich so traurig bin!" the gloom of the Teutoburger Wald settles down on them, and they buckle to and work with an enduring patience such as few other men in the world display, and join the great army here who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the Vaterland to the front.

The British Empire between 1800 and 1910 grew from 1,500,000 square miles to 11,450,000 square miles, and its trade from $400,000,000 to $11,020,000,000; not to mention the United States of America, now considered to be of noticeable importance, though we are universally sneered at by the Germans, to an extent that no American dreams of who has not lived among them, as a land of dollars, and, from the point of view of book-learning, dullards. But it is this, none the less, that Germany envies, and has set out to rival and if possible to surpa.s.s.

No wonder the training must be severe for the athletes who propose to themselves such a task.

For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the German student gives himself up to the rollicking freedom of the corps student's life. That life is so completely misunderstood by the foreigner that it deserves a few words of explanation.

I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically or even lightly with their worship and their creeds, that once I shared, and with which lately I have been, under the most hospitable circ.u.mstances, invited to renew my acquaintance at the Commers and the Mensur.

One may be no longer a constant worshipper at the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen hair, and the enshrouding mystery of skirts, which make for curiosity and reverence in youth; one may have learned, however, the far more valuable lesson that the best women are so much n.o.bler than the best men, that the best men may still kneel to the best women; just as the worst women surpa.s.s the worst men in consciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloyalty, and degradation.

The female bandit in society, or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her weapons from an armory of foulness and cruelty unknown to men; just as the heroines and angels among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries to which few, if any, men have the key.

One returns, therefore, to the playground of one's youth with not less but with more sympathy and understanding. Far from being "brutalizing guilds," far from being mere unions for swilling and slashing, the German corps, by their codes, and discipline, and standards of manners and honor, are, from the chivalrous point of view, the leaven of German student life. In these days many of them have club-houses of their own, where they take their meals in some cases and where they meet for their beer-drinking ceremonies.

There is of course a wide range of expenditure by students at the German universities, whether they are members of the corps or not. At one of the smaller universities in a country town like Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a little tutoring and the system of frei Tisch--money left for the purpose of giving a free midday meal to poor students--may sc.r.a.pe along with an expenditure of as little as twenty dollars a month. A member of a good corps at this same university is well content with, and can do himself well on, seventy dollars a month. I have seen numbers of students' rooms, with bed, writing-table, and simple furniture, perhaps with a balcony where for many months in the year one may write and read, which rent for sixty dollars a year. One may say roughly that at the universities outside the large towns, and not including the fashionable universities, such as Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on comfortably with fifty dollars a month. They have their coffee and rolls in the morning, their midday meal which they take together at a restaurant, and their supper of cold meats, preserves, cheese, and beer where they will. For seventy-five cents a day a student can feed himself.

The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle in his "Economics,"

and not a nursery rhymer, who wrote: "It is likewise well to rise before daybreak, for this contributes to health, wealth, and wisdom."

"Early to bed and early to rise" is a cla.s.sic.

At Bonn, a member of one of the three more fashionable corps spends far more than these sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma-bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily to cultivate social relations, are unknown anywhere in Germany, for a student would make himself unpopularly conspicuous by extravagance. Two to three thousand dollars a year, even at Bonn, as a member of the best corps, would be amply sufficient and is considered an extravagant expenditure.

When the Earl of Ess.e.x was sent to Cambridge in Queen Elizabeth's time, he was provided with a deal table covered with baize, a truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs, and a wash-hand basin. The cost of all this was about $25. When students from all over Europe tramped to Paris to hear Abelard lecture, they begged their way. They were given special licenses as scholars to beg. Learning then, as it is still in Germany, alone of all the nations, was considered to be a pious profession deserving well of the world. We do not even know the names of our scholars in America. How many Americans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the fundamental laws regulating the trend of transformation in chemical and physical processes, or of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale who explains the mystery of sun spots and measures the magnetic forces that play around the sun? How many Frenchmen know Pierron's translation of Aeschylus, or Patin's studies in Greek tragedies, or Charles Maguin, or Maurice Croiset, or Paul Magou or Leconte de Lisle? while in England the ma.s.s of the people not only do not know the names of their scholars, but distrust all mental processes that are super-canine.

The origin of the Landmannschaften, Burschenschaften, and the Corps among the students dates back to the days when the students aligned themselves with more rigidity than now, according to the various German states from which they came. The names of the corps still bear this suggestion, though nowadays the alignment is rather social than geographical. The Burschenschaften societies of students had their origin in political opposition to this separation of the students into communities from the various states. The originators of the Burschenschaften movement, for example, were eleven students at Jena.

Sobriety and chast.i.ty were conditions of entrance, and "Honor, Liberty, Fatherland" were their watchwords. It was deemed a point of honor that a member breaking his vows should confess and retire from the society.

The societies of the Burschenschaften are still considered to have a political complexion and the corps proper have no dealings with them.

In any given semester the number of students in one of these corps varies from as few as ten, to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs, upon the number of available men coming up to the university. Certain corps are composed almost exclusively of n.o.blemen, but none is distinctly a rich man's club.

An active member of a corps during his first two semesters may do a certain amount of serious work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a time "to loaf and invite one's soul," and little attempt is made to do more. Not a few men whom I have known, have not even entered a cla.s.s-room during the two or three semesters of this blossoming period.

I have spent many days and nights with these young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them in their jollity and good-fellowship, and I have agreed, and still agree, that "Wir sind die Konige der Welt, wir sind's durch unsere Freude."

They are by no means the swashbuckling, bullying, dissolute companions painted by those who know nothing about them. They may drink more beer than we deem necessary for health, or even for comfort; and they may take their exercise with a form of sword practice that we do not esteem, they may be proud of the scars of these imitation duels, but these are all matters of tradition and taste.

When one writes of eating and drinking, it is hardly fair to make comparisons from a personal stand-point. An adult of average weight requires each day 125 grams of proteid or building material, 500 grams of carbohydrates, 50 grams of fat. This equals, in common parlance, one pound of bread, one-half pound of meat, one-quarter pound of fat, one pound of potatoes, one-half pint of milk, one-quarter pound of eggs, a.s.suming that one egg equals two ounces, and one-eighth pound of cheese. Divided into three meals, this means: for breakfast, two slices of bread and b.u.t.ter and two eggs; for dinner: one plateful potato soup, large helping of meat with fat, four moderate-sized potatoes, one slice bread and b.u.t.ter; for tea: one gla.s.s of milk and two slices of bread and b.u.t.ter; for supper: two slices of bread and b.u.t.ter and two ounces of cheese.

Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or energy, for the price than any other one food, and, with one or two exceptions, more proteid, or building material, than any other one food.

One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol is about the amount which can be completely oxidized in the body in a day. This quant.i.ty is contained in two fluid ounces of brandy or whiskey, five fluid ounces of port or sherry, ten of claret or champagne or other light wines, and twenty of bottled beer. All this means that a pint of claret, or two gla.s.ses of champagne, or a bottle of beer, or a gla.s.s of whiskey with some aerated water during the day will not hurt a man, and adds perhaps to the "agreeableness of life," as Matthew Arnold phrases it. At any rate, this table of contents is a much safer standard of comparison, in judging the eating and drinking habits of other people, than either your habits or mine.

The German student probably drinks too much, and it is said by safe authorities in Germany that his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer; but he has been at it a long time, and in certain fields of intellectual prowess he is still supreme, and as we only drink with him now occasionally when he is our host, perhaps he had best be left to settle these questions without our criticism.

In general terms, I have always considered, as a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is one who lies down at night without fear, rises in the morning cheerfully, goes to a day's serious work of some kind rejoicing in the prospect, meets his friends gayly, and loves his loves better than himself.

It is folly to maintain, that it does not require pluck and courage to stand up to a swinging Schlager, and take your punishment without flinching, and then to sit without a murmur while your wounds are sewn up and bandaged. I cannot help my preference for foot-ball, or baseball, or rowing, or a cross-country run with the hounds, or grouse or pheasant shooting, or the shooting of bigger game, or the driving of four horses, or the handling of a boat in a breeze of wind, but the "world is so full of a number of things" that he has more audacity than I who proposes to weigh them all in the scales of his personal experience, and then to mark them with their relative values.

First of all, it is to be remembered that these Schlager contests between students are in no sense duels; a duel being the setting by one man of his chance of life against another's chance, both with deadly weapons in their hands. These contests with the Schlager at the German universities, wrongly called duels, are so conducted that there is no possibility of permanent or even very serious injury to the combatants. The attendants who put them into their fighting harness, the doctors who look after them during the contest and who care for them afterward, are old hands at the game, and no mistakes are made.

There is no feeling of animosity between the swordsmen as a rule. They are merely candidates for promotion in their own corps who meet candidates from other corps, and prove their skill and courage auf die Mensur, or fighting-ground.

When a youth joins a corps he chooses a counsellor and friend, a Leibbursch, as he is called, from among the older men, whose special care it is, to see to it that he behaves himself properly in his new environment; he pledges himself to respect the traditions and standards of the corps, and to keep himself worthy of respect among his fellows, and among those whom he meets outside. A companionship and guardianship not unlike this, used to exist in the Greek-letter society to which I once belonged. He of course abides by the rules and regulations of the order. It is a time of freedom in one sense, but it is a freedom closely guarded, and there is rigid discipline here as in practically all other departments of life in Germany.

The young students, or Fuchse, as they are called, are instructed in the way they should go by the older students, or Burschen, whose authority is absolute. This authority extends even to the people whom they may know and consort with, either in the university or in the town, and to all questions of personal behavior, debts, dissipation, manners, and general bearing. In many of the corps there are high standards and old traditions as regards these matters, and every member must abide by them. Every corps student is a patriot, ready to sing or fight for Kaiser and Vaterland, and socialism, even criticism of his country or its rulers, are as out of place among them as in the army or navy. They are particular as to the men whom they admit, and a man's lineage and bearing and relations with older members of the corps are carefully canva.s.sed before he is admitted to membership.

Both the present Emperor and one of his sons have been members of a corps.

Let us spend a day with them. It is Sat.u.r.day. We get up rather late, having turned in late after the Commers of Friday, when the men who are to fight the next day were drunk to, sung to, and wished good fortune on the morrow, and sent home early. The trees are turning green at Bonn, the shrubs are feeling the air with hesitating blossoms, you walk out into the sunshine as gay as a lark, for the champagne and the beer of the night before were good, and you sang away the fumes of alcohol before you went to bed. There was much laughter, and a speech or two of welcome for the guest, responded to at 1 A. M. in German, French, English, and gestures with a beer-mug, and punctuated with the appreciative comments of the company.

It was a time to slough off twenty years or so and let Adam have his chance, and the company was of gentlemen who sympathize with and understand the "Alter Herr," and are only too delighted if he will let the springs of youth bubble and sparkle for them, and glad to encourage him to return to reminiscences of his prowess in love and war, and ready to pledge him in b.u.mper after b.u.mper success in the days to come. You might think it a carouse. Far from it.

The ceremony is presided over by a stern young gentleman, who never for a moment allows any member of the company to get out of hand, and who, when a speech is to be made, makes it with grace and complete ease of manner. Indeed, these young fellows surprise one with their easy mastery of the art of speech-making. Even the spokesman for the Fuchse, or younger students, at the lower end of the table, rises and pledges himself and his companions in a few graceful words, with certain sly references to the possibility that the guest may not have lost his appreciation of the charms of German womankind, which the guest in question here and now, and frankly admits; but not a word of coa.r.s.eness, not a hint that totters on the brink of an indiscretion, and what higher praise can one give to speech-making on such an occasion!

My particular host and introducer to his old corps is youngest of all, and though seemingly as lavish in his potations as any one, sings his way home with me, head as clear, legs as steady, eyes as bright, as though it were 10 A. M. and not 2 A. M., and as though I had not seemed to see his face during most of the evening through the bottom of a beer-mug.

That was the night before. The next morning we stroll over to the room where the Schlager contests are to take place. It is packed with students in their different-colored caps. Beer there is, of course, but no smoking allowed till the bouts are over.

I go down to see the men dressing for the fray. They strip to the waist, put on a loose half-shirt half-jacket of cotton stuff, then a heavily padded half-jerkin that covers them completely from chin to knee. The throat is wrapped round and round with heavy silk bandages.

The right arm and hand are guarded with a glove and a heavily padded leather sleeve; all these impervious to any sword blow. The eyes are guarded with steel spectacle frames fitted with thick gla.s.s. Nothing is exposed but the face and the top of the head. The exposed parts are washed with antiseptics, as are also the swords, repeatedly during the bout. The sword, hilt and blade together, measures one hundred and five centimetres. There is a heavy, well-guarded hilt, and a pliable blade with a square end, sharp as a razor on both edges for some six inches from the end.

The position in the sword-play is to face squarely one's opponent, the sword hand well over the head with the blade held down over the left shoulder. The distance between the combatants is measured by placing the swords between them lengthwise, each one with his chest against the hilt of his own weapon, and this marks the proper distance between them. When they are brought in and face one another, the umpire, with a bow, explains the situation. The two seconds with swords crouch each beside his man, ready to throw up the swords and stop the fighting between each bout. Two other men stand ready to hold the rather heavily weighted sword arm of their comrade on the shoulder during the pauses. Two others with cotton dipped in an antiseptic preparation keep the points of the swords clean. Still another official keeps a record in a book, of each cut or scratch, the length of time, the number of bouts, and the result. The doctor decides when a wound is bad enough to close the contest.

At the word "Los!" the blades sing and whistle in the air, the work being done almost wholly with the wrist, some four blows are exchanged, there is a pause, then at it again, till the allotted number of bouts are over, or one or the other has been cut to the point where the doctor decides that there shall be no more. We follow them downstairs again, where, after being carefully washed, the combatants are seated in a chair one after the other, their friends crowd around and count the st.i.tches as the surgeon works, and comment upon what particular twist of the wrist produced such and such a gash.

I have seen scores of these contests, and during the last year as many as a dozen or more. There is no record of any one ever having been seriously injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more men injured by too much beer than too much sword-play.

It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player should sneer at bull- fighting; the boxer at fencing; the rider to hounds at these Schlager bouts; and that we game-players should say contemptuous things of the contests of our neighbors. Personally, if one could eliminate the horse from the contest, I go so far as to believe that even bull-fighting is better than no game at all. As for these Schlager contests, they seem to me no more brutal than our own foot-ball, which is only brutal to the shivering crowd of the too tender who have never played it, and not so dangerous as polo or pig-sticking, and a thousand times better than no contest at all.

I am not of those who believe that the human body and that human life are the most precious and valuable things in the world. They are only servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls that ought to be their masters. Without training, without obedience, without the instant willingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the human body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. I claim that it braces the mind to expose the body; that an education in the prepared emergencies of games and sport, is the best training for the unprepared emergencies with which life is strewn.

The most cruel people I have ever known were gentle enough physically, but they were hard and sour in their social relations, and often enough called "good" by their fellows. The disappointments, losses, sorrows, defeats, of each one of us, trouble, even though imperceptibly, the waters of life that we all must drink of; and to ignore or to rejoice at these misfortunes is only muddying what we ourselves must drink. I believe the hardening of the body goes some way toward softening the heart and cleansing the soul, and toward fitting a man with that cheerful charity that supplies the oil of intercourse in a creaking world of rival interests.

To see a youth swinging a sword at his fellow's face with delighted energy; to see a man riding off vigorously at polo; to see a man hard at it with the gloves on; to see another flinging himself and his horse over a wall or across a ditch; to see a man taking his nerves in hand, to make a two-yard put for a half, when he is one down and two to play; to see these things without seeing that--perhaps often enough in a muddy sort of way--the soul is making a slave of the body, that courage is mastering cowardice, that in an elementary way the youth is learning how to give himself generously when some great emergency calls upon him to give his life for an ideal, a tradition, a duty, is to see nothing but brutality, I admit. Who does not know that the Carthaginians at Cannae were one thing, the Carthaginians at Capua another! I have therefore no acidulous effeminacy to pour upon these German Schlager bouts. I prefer other forms of exercise, but I am a hardened believer in the manhood bred of contests, and though their ways are not my ways, I prefer a world of slashed faces to a world of soft ones.

Prosit, gentlemen! Better your world than the world of Semitic haggling and exchange; of caution and smoothness; of the disasters born of daintiness; of sliding over the ship's side in women's clothes to live, when it was a moral duty to be drowned.

Better your world than any such worlds as those, for