Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View

Alas, how often this courageous and gentlemanly attitude has been taken advantage of! I have headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I propose to examine these so-called indiscr...

It is a very strenuous and economical existence, however, for everybody, and it requires a politically tame population to be thus driven. The dangerous geographical situation of...

Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homicidal crime suffers the extreme penalty attaching to such crimes in America, and these figures, I admit, are a shocking revelation of s...

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the father of modern philosophy, writes: "It is not enough to point out what ought to be; we must also point out what can be, so that e...

The nations of the earth, close as they are together in these days, are worlds apart in thought. Each builds its life in words, and the words are as little alike as in the days...

It has been said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he lo...

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 wh...

The insurrections in Russian and Austrian Poland, had their echoes in Posen, and since 1849 Prussia has tried in every way to substitute Germans for Poles, in the country, and t...

The three classes of schools recognized as leading later to a university career are the Gymnasium, in which Latin and Greek are still the fundamental requirements; the Realgymna...

At horse shows and in the Tiergarten, and in riding-places in other cities, I have looked at hundreds of horses, and, if I mistake not, Germany is both buying and breeding the v...

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged autopsy upon the Germans. They were dismembered or joined together as suited his plans. At his beck they fought against one another, or...

Germany, like the rest of us, has been obliged to face the various social problems that arise from original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to ascribe to industrial prog...

In 1851 the Krupps exhibited at the exposition in London the first cannon made of cast steel; now they turn out more shells and shrapnel in a week than were used at the whole ba...

This is no heated assault on German culture. It is a natural phase of development. Youthful candidates for worldliness all go through this pornocratic stage. "The impudence of t...

I call attention again to the important point, that it has been difficult to manufacture an all-round German patriotism. As a consequence patriotism in Germany is more than a se...

When the Roman Emperor Augustus died, in 14 A. D., to be succeeded by Tiberius, the Roman Empire was bounded on the north and east by the Rhine, the Danube, the Black Sea and it...

Of technical military matters I know nothing. I have some experience in handling horses in harness and under saddle, and on subjects with which I am familiar I venture to pass j...

In a ragged school in the neighborhood of Posen where the children could hardly speak German they could sing; in a public school in Charlottenburg fifty boys, aged between eight...

William I had succeeded his brother as king. He was a soldier and a believer in the army, and wished to spend more on it, and to lengthen the time of service with the colors to...

Whatever one may feel of instinctive dislike, the open-minded observers of the historical progress of Germany, all recognize that Germany would not be in the foremost place she...

The first printed suggestion that America should be called America came from a German. Martin Waldseemueller, of Freiburg, in his Cosmographiae Introductio, published in 1507, w...

America has suffered because she was overtaken by a great material prosperity before she had a sufficient spiritual and intellectual development, and up to now the material side...

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 an...

This institution had no political power, was merely a theoretical political ring for the theoretical political conflicts of German agitators and dreamers, and was composed of th...

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 indu...

In hearty and manly opposition to this attitude toward life is the example of Admiral X. He had served long and gallantly, and just before he retired a friend said to him: "I he...

I should be sorry to give the impression that I have not given proper value to the work of the German professor and student in bringing about a more liberal constitution for the...

Even in higher circles in Germany there is a gushing idealism about the relations of the sexes. In their songs and sayings, as well as in their mythology, there is a laudation o...

The German student is at a distinct advantage in this privilege of hearing the best men at whatever university they may be. The number of students, indeed, at particular German...

It is England's business to know just now, and to some extent ours, how many ships Germany is building and how many men she has in training to man them; but it is not in the lea...

Germany had no literature at this time. When Froissart was writing French history, and Joinville his delightful chronicles; when Chaucer and Wycliffe were gayly and gravely maki...

Between 1860 and 1900 the proportion of urban to rural population in the United States more than doubled. In the last ten years the percentage of people living in cities, or oth...

Fortunately there is also a large and increasing class in Germany who distrust the situation. They point to the fact that technical education is producing an army of dingy artis...