Germany and the Germans Part 8

It may be a reaction from this negligence with which they are treated that produces a quality, both in the writing and in the ill.u.s.trations of the German newspapers, which is unknown in America. Many of the ill.u.s.trated papers indulge in pictorial flings which may be compared only to the scribbling and coa.r.s.e drawings, in out-of-the-way places, of dirty-minded boys. With the exception of the well-known Fliegende Blatter, Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representative, there is nothing to compare with the artistic excellence and restrained good taste of Life or Punch, for example.

There is one ill.u.s.trated paper published in Munich, Simplicissimus, which deserves more than negligent and pa.s.sing comment. It has two artists of whom I know nothing except what I have learned from their work, Th. Th. Heine and Gulbransson. These men are Aristophanic in their ability as draughtsmen and as censors, in striking at the weaknesses, political, military, and official, of their countrymen.

Their work is something quite new in Germany, and worthy of comparison with the best in any country. It is not elegant, it is Rabelaisian; and though I have nothing to retract in regard to coa.r.s.eness, and no wish to commend the att.i.tude taken toward German political and social life, in fairness one is bound to call attention to the pictorial work in this particular paper as of a very high order, and to recognize its power. If Heine could have turned his wit into the drawings of Hogarth, we should have had something not unlike Simplicissimus, and any German annoyed at the criticisms of his national life from the pen of a foreigner, may well turn to his own Simplicissimus, and be humbly grateful that no foreign pen-point can possibly pierce more deeply, than this domestic pencil, at work in his own country.

The danger for the critic and the wit, which few avoid, is that with incomparable advantages over his opponent he will not play fair. In spite of the awful reputation of our so-called "yellow press," which is often boisterously impudent, and sometimes inclined to indulge in comments and revelations of the private affairs of individuals which can only be dubbed coa.r.s.e and cowardly, there is seldom a descent to the indescribably indecent caricatures which one finds every week in the ill.u.s.trated papers in Germany. As we have noted elsewhere, just as the citizens of Berlin, as one sees them in the streets and in public places, give one the impression that they are not house-trained, so many of the pens and pencils which serve the German press, leave one with the feeling that their possessors would not know how to behave in a cultivated and well-regulated household.

Every gentleman in Germany must have been ashamed of the writing in the German press after the sinking of the t.i.tanic. There was a blaze of brutal pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across any claim to gentlemanliness on the part of the majority. When every brave man in the world was lamenting the death of Scott, the English Arctic explorer, one German paper intimated that he had committed suicide to avoid the bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack of generosity toward his expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such a cur should have escaped unthrashed, even among the German journalists.

These two examples of lack of fine feeling mark them for what they are. Among gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark of breeding is more often discovered in what one does not say, does not write, does not do, than in positive action. There was much, at that time, when fifteen hundred people had been buried in icy water, and scores of American and English gentlemen had gone down to death, just in answer to: "Ladies first, gentlemen!" that should have been left unsaid and unwritten. The quality of the German journalist, with half a dozen exceptions, was betrayed to the full in those few days, and many a German cheek mantled with shame.

However, a man may eat with his knife and still be an authority on bridge-building; he may tuck his napkin under his chin preparatory to, and as an armor against, the well-known vagaries of liquids, before he takes his soup or his soft-boiled eggs, and still be an authority on soap-making; he may wear a knitted waistcoat with a frock-coat to luncheon, and be deeply versed in Russian history. He may have no inkling of the traditions of fair play, or of the reticences of courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and yet be a scholar in his way.

Indeed, in none of the other cultured countries does one find so many men of trained minds, but with such untrained manners and morals. In their hack of sensation-mongering, in their indifference to social gossip, in their trustworthy and learned comments upon things scientific, musical, theatrical, literary, and historical, they are as men to school-boys compared to the American press. They have the utter contempt for mere smartness that only comes with severe educational training. They have the scholar's impatience with trivialities. They skate, not to cut their names on the ice, but to get somewhere, and the whole industrial and scientific world knows how quickly they have arrived.

Our newspapers make a business of training their readers in that worst of all habits, mental dissipation. The German press is not thus guilty. Despite all I have written, I am quite sure that if I were banished from the active world and could see only half a dozen journals on my lonely island, one of them would be a German newspaper.

It may be that I have a perverted literary taste, for I can get more humor, more keen enjoyment, out of a census report or an etymological dictionary than from a novel. My favorite literary dissipation is to read the works of that distinguished statistician at Washington, Mr.

O. P. Austin, the poet-laureate of industrial America, or the toilsome and exciting verbal journeys of the Rev. Mr. Skeat. The cla.s.sic humorists do not compare with them, in my humble opinion, as sources of fantastic surprises. This, perhaps, accounts for my sincere admiration for that quality of scholarship, learning, and accuracy in the German press. Nor does the possession of these qualities in the least controvert the impression given by the German press of political powerlessness, of social ignorance and incompetence, and of boorish ignorance of the laws of common decency in international comment and controversy. A great scholar may be a b.o.o.by in a drawing-room, and a lamentable failure as an adviser in matters political and social. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place." Germany has put some astonishing failures to her credit through her belief that learning can take the place of common-sense, and scholarship do the tasks of that intelligent and experienced observation to which the abused word, worldliness, is given. Perhaps it is as well that the German press declines to keep a social diary; well, too, that it has no candidates for the office of society Haruspex, whose ghoulish business it is to find omens and prophecies in the entrails of his victims. In that respect, at any rate, both society and the press in Germany are as is the salon to the scullery, compared with ours. As for that little knot of ill.u.s.trated weekly papers in England, with their nauseating letter-press for sn.o.bs inside, and their advertis.e.m.e.nts of patent complexion remedies and corsets outside, there is nothing like them in Germany or anywhere else, so far as I know. You may advertise your shooting-party, your dance, or your dinner-party, and thus keep yourself before the world as though you were a whiskey, a soap, or a superfluous-hair-destroyer, if you please, and, alas, many there are who do so. At least Germany knows nothing of this weekly auction of privacy, this nauseating sn.o.bbery which is a fungus-growth seen at its strongest in British soil.

I am bound, both by tradition and experience as an American, to discover the reason for such conditions in the lack of fluidity in social and political life in Germany. The industrials, the military, the n.o.bility, the civil servants, and to some extent the Jews, are all in separate social compartments; and the political parties as well keep much to themselves and without the personal give and take outside of their purely official life which obtains in America and in England.

It is an impossible suggestion, I know, but if the upper and lower houses of the empire, or of Prussia, could meet in a match at base-ball, or golf, or cricket; if the army could play the civil service; if the newspaper correspondents could play the under-secretaries; if they could all be induced occasionally, to throw off their mental and moral uniforms, and to meet merely as men, a current of fresh air would blow through Germany, that she would never after permit to be shut out.

Personal dignity is refreshed, not lost, by a romp. Who has not seen distinguished Americans and distinguished Englishmen, in their own or in their friends' houses, or at one or another of our innumerable games, behaving like boys out of school, crawling about beneath improvised skins and growling and roaring in charades; indulging in flying chaff of one another; in the skirts of their wives and sisters playing cricket, or base-ball, or tennis with the one hand only; caricaturing good-humoredly some of their own official business, or arranging a match of some kind where their own servants join in to make up a side; or, and well I remember it, half a dozen youths of about fifty playing cricket with one stump and a broom-handle for an hour one hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of laughter, and a shower of impromptu nicknames, and one or two of them bore names known all over the English-speaking world. n.o.body loses any dignity, any importance; but there is an unconquerable stiffness in Germany that makes me laugh almost as I make this suggestion. We have only a certain reserve of serious work in us. To attempt to be serious all the time is never to be at rest. This worried busyness, which is a characteristic of the more mediocre of my own countrymen also, is really a symptom of deficient vitality. Things are in the saddle and you are the mule and not the man, if you are such an one. The stiffness and self-consciousness of the Germans is really a sign of their lack of confidence in themselves. Youth is always more serious than middle age, for the same reason. A man who is at home in the world laughs and is gay; he who is shy and doubtful scowls. It is the G.o.d-fearing who are not afraid, it is the man-fearing who are awkward and uncomfortable.

The first thing to be afraid of is oneself, but after oneself is conquered why be afraid to let him loose!

It would be quite untrue to give the impression that there is no fun, no harking, no chaff, in Germany, although I am bound to say that there is little of this last. I can bear witness to a healthy love of fun, and to an exuberant exploitation of youthful vitality in many directions among the students and younger officers, for example.

Better companions for a romp exist nowhere. Having been blessed with an undue surplus of vitality, which for many years kept me fully occupied in directing its expenditure, alas, not always with success, I can only add that I found as many youthful companions in a similar predicament in Germany, as anywhere else.

But with the Englishman and the American, both temperament and environment permit youthfulness to last longer. The German must soon get into the mill and grind and be ground, and he is by temperament more easily caught and put into the uniform of a constantly correct behavior. As for us, we are all boys still at thirty, many of us at fifty, and some of us die ere the school-boy exuberance has all been squeezed or dried out of us. Not so in Germany. One sees more men in Germany who give the impression that they could not by any possibility ever have been boys than with us. They begin to look cramped at thirty, and they are stiff at fifty, as though they had been fed on a diet of circ.u.mspection, caution, and obedience. They are drilled early and they soon become amenable, and then even indulgent, toward the drill-master.

This German people have not developed into a nation, they have been squeezed into the mould of a nation. The nation is not for the people, the people are for the nation. "By the word Const.i.tution," writes Lord Bolingbroke, "we mean, whenever we speak with propriety and exactness, the a.s.semblage of laws, inst.i.tutions, and customs derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system by which the community hath agreed to be governed." The Germans have no such const.i.tution, for the community was scarcely consulted, much less hath it agreed to the general system by which it is governed.

Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and must be, conducted by officials. That is as true of America as of Germany. The fundamental difference is that with us these official persons are executive officers only, the real captain is the people; while in Germany these official persons are the real governors of the people, subject to the commands of one who repeatedly and publicly a.s.serts that his commission is from G.o.d and not from the people. This puts whole cla.s.ses of the community permanently into uniform, and the wearers of these uniforms are almost afraid to laugh, and would consider it sacrilege to romp.

Caution is a very puny form of morality. "He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." It is as true politically as of other spheres of life that "he or she who lets the world or his own portion of it choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation." Thus writes John Stuart Mill, and what else can be said of the political activities of the Germans? What journalist or what patriot indeed can take seriously a majority that has no power? What people can call itself free to whom its rulers are not responsible?

The Social Democrats, at the moment of writing, have won one hundred and ten seats in the Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a const.i.tution is a dream, and if they are cantankerous or truculent the Reichstag will be dismissed by a wave of the hand. Say what one will, they are a mammillary people politically, and the strongest party in the Reichstag is merely an energetic political mangonel. Their leaders moult opinions, they do not mould them, and could not translate them into action if they did.

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so strongly radical, but nothing will come of it. The Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, did not hesitate to take an early opportunity, after the opening of the new Reichstag, to state boldly that the issue was Authority versus Democratization, and that he had no fear of the result. It is customary for the newly elected Praesidium, the president and two vice-presidents of the Reichstag, to be received in audience by the Emperor. On this occasion the Socialists forbade their representative to go, and the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any of them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar hack of good manners only brought contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any rate for some time to come. "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him."

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we Americans perhaps beyond all other peoples have profited by her literature, her philosophy, her music, her scientific and economic teaching. We have kneaded these things into our political as well as into our intellectual life.

"Intellectual emanc.i.p.ation, if it does not give us at the same time control over ourselves, is poisonous." And who writes thus? Goethe!

But the intellectual freedom of Germany has done next to nothing to bring about political or, in the realm of journalism, personal self-control.

It is a strange state of affairs. Intelligent men and women in Germany do not realize it. Not once, but many times, I have been told: "You foreigners are forever commenting upon our bureaucracy, our officialdom, but it is not as all-powerful as you think. We have plenty of freedom!" These people are often themselves officials, nearly always related to, or of the society, of the ruling cla.s.s. The rulers and the ruling cla.s.s have naturally no sense of oppression, no feeling that they are unduly subject to others, since the others are themselves. I am quite willing to believe of my own and of other people's personal opinions that they are not dogmas merely because they are baptized in intolerance. I must leave it to the reader to judge from the facts, whether or no the Germans have a political autonomy, which permits the exercise and development of political power. A glance at the political parties themselves will make this perhaps the more clear.

The official organization of the conservative party, may be said to date back to the founding of the Neue Preussische Zeitung in 1848, and the organization of the party in many parts of Germany. Earlier still, Burke was the hero of the pioneers of this party, whose first newspaper had for editor, no less a person than Heinrich von Kleist, and whose first endeavors were to support G.o.d and the King, and to throw off the yoke of foreign domination.

In 1876 was formed the Deutsch-Konservativ party supporting Bismarck.

"Konigthum von Gottes Gnaden" is still their watchword, with opposition to Social Democracy, support of imperialism, agrarian and industrial protection, and Christian teaching in the schools, as the planks of their platform. They also combat Jewish influence everywhere, particularly in the schools. Allied to this party is the Bund der Landwirte and the Deutscher Bauernbund. In the election of 1912 they elected forty-five representatives to the Reichstag, a serious falling off from the sixty-three seats held previous to that election. The Free Conservative portion of the Conservative party, is composed of the less autocratic members of the landed n.o.bility, but there is little difference in their point of view.

The Centrum, or Catholic party, is in theory not a religious party; in practice it is, though it does not bar out Protestant members who hold similar views to their own. Its political activity began in 1870, and the first call for the formation of the party came from Reichensperger in the Kolnischer Volkszeitung. The famous leader of the party, and a politician who even held his own against Bismarck, was the Hanoverian Justizminister, Doctor Ludwig Windthorst. The stormy time of the party was from 1873 to 1878, when Bismarck attempted to oppose the growing power of the Catholic Church, and more particularly of the Jesuits.

The so-called May laws of that year forbade Roman Catholic intervention in civil affairs; obliged all ministers of religion to pa.s.s the higher-schools examinations and to study theology three years at a university; made all seminaries subject to state inspection; and gave fuller protection to those of other creeds. In 1878 Bismarck needed the support of the Centrum party to carry through the new tariff, and the May laws, except that regarding civil marriage, were repealed. The party stands for religious teaching in the primary schools, Christian marriage, federal character of empire, protection, and independence of the state. More than any other party it has kept its representation in the Reichstag at about the same number. In 1903 they cast 1,875,300 votes and had 100 members. In 1907 they had 103 members, and in the last election of 1912 they won 93 seats. Even this Catholic party is now divided. Count Oppersdorff leads the "Only-Catholic" party, against the more liberal section which has its head-quarters at Cologne, where the late Cardinal Fisher was the leader.

At the session of the Reichstag in 1913, when the question of the readmission of the Jesuits was raised, the Centrum party even sided with the Socialists in the matter of the expropriation law for Posen, in order to annoy the chancellor for his opposition to themselves. Such political miscegenation as this does not show a high level of faith or of policy.

It may be of interest to the reader to know that in 1903 the population of Germany was 58,629,000, and the number qualified to vote 12,531,000; in 1907 the population was 61,983,000, and the number qualified to vote, 13,353,000; in 1912 the population was 65,407,000, and the qualified voters numbered over 14,000,000, of whom 12,124,503 voted. In 1903 there were 9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 11,304,000.

The German Reichstag has 397 members, or 1 representative to every 156,000 inhabitants; the United States House of Representatives has 433 members, or 1 for every 212,000 inhabitants; England, 670 members, or 1 for every 62,000; France, 584, or 1 for every 67,000; Italy, 508, or 1 for every 64,000; Austria, 516, or 1 for every 51,000.

Despite the fact that the Conservative and the Catholic parties have much in common, and are the parties of the Right and Centre: these names are given the political parties in the Reichstag according to their grouping on the right, centre, and left of the house, looking from the tribune or speaker's platform, from which all set speeches are delivered, they are often at odds among themselves, and Bismarck and Bulow brought about tactical differences among them for their own purposes. Their programme may be summed up as "As you were," which is not inspiring either as an incentive or as a command.

The Liberal parties are the National liberale; Fortschrittspartei, or Progressives; and the Freisinnige Volkspartei, or Liberal Democratic party.

The National Liberal party was strongest during the days when Prussia's efforts were directed mainly toward a federation and a strengthening of the bonds which hold the states together; "unter dem Donner der Kanonen von Koniggratz ist der nationalliberale Gedanke geboren." Loyalty to emperor and empire, country above party, a fleet competent to protect the country and its overseas interests, are watchwords of the party. The party is protectionist, and in matters of school and church administration in accord with the Free Conservatives.

The Liberal Democratic party demands electoral reform, no duties on foodstuffs, and imperial insurance laws for the workingmen.

The Fortschrittspartei finds its intellectual beginnings, in the condensing of the hazy clouds of revolution in 1848, in the persons of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Freiherr von Stein. Politically, the party came into being in 1861, and Waldeck, von Hoverbeck, and Virchow are familiar names to students of German political history; later Eugen Richter was the leader of the party in the Reichstag. This party is still for free-trade, in opposition to military and bureaucratic government, favorable to parliamentary government. Of the grouping and regrouping of these parties; of their divisions for and against Bismarck's policies; of their splits on the questions of free-trade and protection; of their leanings now to the right, now to the left; of their differences over details of taxation for purposes of defence; of their att.i.tudes toward a powerful fleet, and toward the Jesuits, it would require a volume, and a large one, to describe. Though it is dangerous to characterize them, they may be said without inaccuracy to represent the democratic movement in Germany both in thought and political action, and to hold a wavering place between the Conservatives and the Social Democrats.

The Social Democratic party, the party of the wage-earners only a.s.sumed recognizable outlines after the appeal of Ferdinand La.s.salle for a workingman's congress at Leipsic in 1863. In 1877 they mustered 493,000 voters. Bismarck and the monarchy looked askance at their growing power. It was attempted to pa.s.s a law, punishing with fine and imprisonment: "wer in einer den offentlichen Frieden gefahrdenden Weise verschiedene Kla.s.sen der Bevolkerung gegeneinander offentlich aufreizt oder wer in gleicher Weise die Inst.i.tute der Ehe, der Familie und des Eigentums offentlich durch Rede oder Schrift angreift." This was a direct attack upon the Socialists, but the Reichstag refused to pa.s.s the law. In May, 1878, and shortly after in June, two attempts were made upon the life of the Kaiser. Bismarck then easily and quickly forced through the new law against the Socialists.

Under this law newspapers were suppressed, organizations dissolved, meetings forbidden, and certain leaders banished. For twelve years the party was kept under the watchful restraint of the police, and their propaganda made difficult and in many places impossible. After the repeal of this law, and for the last twenty years, the party has increased with surprising rapidity. In 1893 the Social Democrats cast 1,787,000 votes; in 1898, 2,107,000; in 1903, more than 3,000,000; and in the last election, 1912, 4,238,919; and they have just returned 110 delegates to the Reichstag out of a total of 397 members.

It is noteworthy that in America there is one Socialist member of the House of Representatives; while in Germany, which combines autocratic methods of government, with something more nearly approaching state ownership and control, than any other country in the world, the most numerous party in the present Reichstag is that of the Social Democrats.

Freedom is the only medicine for discontent. There is no rope for the hanging of a demagogue like free speech; no such disastrous gift for the socialist as freedom of action. Imagine what would have happened in America if we had attempted to suppress Bryan! The result of giving him free play and a fair hearing, the result of allowing the people to judge for themselves, has been a prolonged spectacle of political hari-kiri which has had a wholesome though negative educational influence. The most accomplished oratorical Pierrot of our day, who changes his political philosophy as easily as he changes his costume, has seen one hundred and sixty cities and towns in America turn to government by commission, and has kept the heraldic donkey always just out of reach of the political carrots, until the Republican party itself fairly pushed the donkey into the carrot-field, but even then with another leader. No autocrat could have done so much.

As early as 1887 Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht outlined the programme of the party, and this programme, again revised at Erfurt in 1891, stands as the expression of their demands. They claim that: "Die Arbeiterkla.s.se kann ihre okonomischen Kampfe nicht fuhren und ihre okonomische Organisation nicht entwickeln ohne politisehe Rechte."

Roughly they demand: the right to form unions and to hold public meetings; separation of church and state; education free and secular, and the feeding of school-children; state expenditure to be met exclusively by taxes on incomes, property, and inheritance; people to decide on peace and war; direct system of voting, one adult one vote; citizen army for defence; referendum; international court of arbitration. Their leader in the Reichstag to-day is Bebel, and from what I have heard of the debates in that a.s.sembly I should judge that they have not only a majority over any other party in numbers, but also in speaking ability. The members of the Socialist party always leave the house in a body, at the end of each session, just before the cheers are called for, for the Emperor. They have become more and more daring of late in their outspoken criticism of both the Emperor and his ministers. In consequence, they are replied to with ever-increasing dislike and bitterness by their opponents. At a recent banquet of old university students in Berlin, Freiherr von Zedlitz, presiding, quoted Barth and Richter: "The victory of Social Democracy means the destruction of German civilization, and a Social Democratic state would be nothing more than a gigantic house of correction."

In addition to the four important political divisions in the Reichstag, the Conservative, Liberal, Clerical, and Socialist, there are many subdivisions of these. Since 1871 there have been some forty different parties represented, eleven conservative, fourteen liberal, two clerical, nine national-particularist, and five socialist. To-day, besides four small groups and certain representatives acknowledging no party, there are some eleven different factions.

1871 1881 1893 1907 1912

Right, or Conservative. 895,000 1,210,000 1,806,000 2,141,000 1,149,916 Liberal................ 1,884,000 1,948,000 2,102,000 3,078,000 3,227,846 Clerical............... 973,000 1,618,000 1,920,000 2,779,000 2,012,990 Social Democrats....... 124,000 312,000 1,787,000 3,259,000 4,238,919

So far as one may so divide them, the voters have aligned themselves as follows: In the last elections, in 1912, the Conservatives and their allies elected 75 members; the Clericals, 93; the Poles, 18; and the Guelphs, 5; and these come roughly under the heading of the party of the Right. Under the heading Left, the National Liberals and Progressive party elected 88, and the Social Democrats 110 members to the Reichstag. The parties stand therefore roughly divided at the moment of writing as 191 Conservative, and 200 Radical, with 6 members unaccounted for. The Poles with 18 seats, the Alsatians with 5, the Guelphs and Lorrainers and Danes with 8 seats, and the no-party with 2 seats, are also represented, but are here placed with the party of the Right. To divide the parties into two camps gives the result that, roughly, four and a half millions voted that they were satisfied, and seven and a half millions that they were not.

No doubt any chancellor, including Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide the Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have done. Theoretically these divisions may be useful to the reader, but practically to the leader they are useless. Bebel, the leader of the Social Democrats, declares himself ready to shoulder a musket to defend the country; Heydebrandt, the leader of the Conservatives, and possibly the most effective speaker in the Reichstag, has spoken warmly in favor of social reform laws; the Clericals are for peace, almost at any price; the Agrarians or Junkers for a tariff on foodstuffs and cattle, and one might continue a.n.a.lyzing the parties until one would be left bewildered at their refining of the political issues at stake. Back to G.o.d and the Emperor; and forward to a const.i.tutional monarchy with the chancellor responsible to the Reichstag, and perhaps later a republic, represent the two extremes.

Between the two everything and anything. It is hard to put together a team out of these diverse elements that a chancellor can drive with safety, and with the confidence that he will finally arrive with his load at his destination. In addition to these parties there are the frankly disaffected representatives of conquered Poland, of conquered Holstein, of conquered Alsace-Lorraine, and of conquered Hanover, this last known as the Guelph party; all of them anti-Prussian.

It is not to be wondered at that the comments, deductions, and prophecies of foreigners are wildly astray when dealing with German politics. In America, religious differences and racial differences play a small role at Washington; but the 220 Protestants, the 141 Catholics, the 3 Jews, the 5 free-thinkers, and so on, in the last Reichstag are in a way parties as well. In that same a.s.sembly 2 members were over 80, 78 over 60, 271 between 40 and 60, 42 under 40, and 3 under 30 years of age. One hundred and six members were landed proprietors; 220 were of the liberal professions, including 37 authors, 35 judges or magistrates, 21 clericals, 7 doctors, and 1 artist; 13 merchants; 21 manufacturers; and 20 shopkeepers and laborers. Seventy-two members were of the n.o.bility, a decided falling off from 1878, when they numbered 162. Two hundred and fifty members were educated at a university, and practically all may be said to have had an education equal if not superior to that given in our smaller colleges.

In the American Congress, in the House of Representatives, we have 212 lawyers, though there are only 135,000 lawyers in our population of 90,000,000. We have in that same a.s.sembly 50 business men, representing the 15,000,000 of our people engaged in trade and industry. Perhaps the German Reichstag is as fairly representative as our own House of Representatives, though both a.s.semblies show the babyhood of civilization which still votes for flashing eyes, thumping fists, hollering patriotism, and smooth phrases. The surprising feature of elective a.s.semblies is that here and there Messrs. Self-Control, Ability, Dignity, and Independence find seats at all. The members are paid, since 1906, a salary of 3,000 marks, with a deduction of 20 marks for each day's absence. They have free pa.s.ses over German railways during the session. The Reichstag is elected every five years.

The appearance of the Reichstag to the stranger is notable for the presence of military, naval, and clerical uniforms. It is, as one looks down upon them, an a.s.sembly where at least one-fourth are bald or thin-haired, and together they give the impression of being big in the waist, careless in costume, slovenly in carriage, and lacking proper feeding, grooming, and exercise. It is clearly an a.s.semblage, not of men of action, but of men of theories. Not only their appearance betrays this, but their debates as well, and what one knows of their individual training and preferences goes to substantiate this judgment of them. There are no soldiers, sailors, explorers, governors of alien people; no men, in short, who have solved practical problems dealing with men, but only theorists. Such men as Gotzen, Solf, and others, who have had actual experience of dealing with men, are rare exceptions. Probably the best men in Germany wish, and wish heartily, that there were more such men; indeed, I betray no secret when I declare that the most intelligent and patriotic criticism in Germany coincides with my own.

The electoral divisions of Germany, as we have noted elsewhere, have not been changed for forty years, with a consequent disproportionate representation from the rural, as over against the enormously increased population, of the urban and industrial districts. The Conservatives, for example, in 1907 gained 1 seat for every 18,232 votes; the Clericals or Centrum, 1 seat for every 20,626 votes; the National Liberals, 1 for every 30,635 votes; and the Social Democrats, 1 for every 75,781 votes. It may be seen from this, how overwhelming must be the majority of votes cast by the Social Democrats, in order to gain a majority representation in the Reichstag itself. In 1912 they cast more than one-third of the votes, and are represented by 110 members out of the total of 397.

For the student of German politics it is important to remember, that the Social Democrats are not all representatives of socialism or of democracy. Their demands at this present time are far from the radical theory that all sources of production should be in the hands of the people. Only a small number of very red radicals demand that. Their successes have been, and they are real successes, along the lines of greater protection and more political liberty for the workingman. The number of their votes is swelled by thousands of voters who express their general discontent in that way. The state in Germany owns railroads, telegraph and telephone lines; operates mines and certain industries, and both controls and directly helps certain large manufactories which are either of benefit to the state, or which, if they were entirely independent, might prove a danger to the state. The state enforces insurance against sickness, accident, and old age, and the three million office-holders are dependent upon the state for their livelihood and their pensions.

It is a striking thing in Germany to see human nature cropping out, even under these ideal conditions; for it is difficult to see how the state could be more grandmotherly in her officious care of her own.