Chapter 14

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 very best in the way of mounts, though their civilian riders are often of the scissors variety. There are comparatively few harness horses, and in Berlin scarcely a dozen well-turned-out private carriages, outside the imperial equipages, which are always superbly horsed and beautifully turned out; so my eyes tell me at least, and I have watched the streets carefully for months. The minor details of a properly turned-out carriage (bits, chains, liveries, saddle-cloths, and so on) are still unknown here. I have had the privilege of driving and riding some of the horses in the imperial stables; and I have seen all of them at one time or another being exercised in harness and under the saddle. I have never driven a better-mannered four, or ridden more perfectly broken saddle-horses. There are three hundred and twenty-six horses in his Majesty's stables, and for a private stable of its size it has no equal in the world. I may add, too, that there is probably no better "whip" in the world to-day, whether with two horses, four horses, or six horses, than the gentleman who trains the harness horses in the imperial stables. This German coachman would be a revelation at a horse show in either New York or London. If the citizens of Berlin were as well-mannered as the horses in the imperial stables, this would be the most elegant capital in the world. It is to be regretted that his Majesty's very accomplished master of the horse cannot also hold the position of censor morum to the citizens of Berlin. Individual prowess in the details of cosmopolitan etiquette has not reached a high level, but in all matters of mere house-keeping there are no better municipal housewives than these German cities and towns.

As a further example, the statues of Berlin are carefully cleaned in the spring, but what statues! With the exception of the Lessing, the Goethe, and the Great Elector statues, the statue of Frederick the Great, and the reclining statues of the late emperor and empress, by Begas, and one or two others, one sees at once that these citizens are no more capable of ornamenting their city than of dressing themselves.

Poor Bismarck! Grotesque figures (men, women, animals) surround the base of his statue in Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in a corrugated golf costume, with a colossal two-handed sword in front of him, he is a melancholy figure, gazing out over a tumble-down beer-garden. At Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must admit, a really fine bust of Bismarck. On a solid square pedestal of granite, covered with ivy and surrounded by the whispering, or sighing, or creaking and cracking trees that he loved, and facing the setting sun, and alone in a secluded corner, just the place he would have chosen, there are the head and shoulders of the real Bismarck. Here for once he has escaped the fussy attentions of the artistry that he detested. Lehnbach, who painted Bismarck so many scores of times, never gave him the color that his face kept all through life, and with the exception of this bust, of the scores of Bismarck memorials one sees all commiserate the lack of artist ability; they do not commemorate Bismarck. If this is what they do to the greatest man in their history, what is to be expected elsewhere? What has poor Joachim Friedrich done that he should pose forever in the Sieges Allee as an intoxicated hitching-post? What, indeed, have his companions done that they should stand in two rows there, studies in contortion, with a gilded Russian dancer with wings at one end of their line, and a woodeny Roland at the other? But there they are, simpering a paltry patriotism, insipid as history and ridiculous as art. What has become of Lessing, and Winckelmann, and Goethe, and their teachings? Is this the price that a nation must pay for its industrial progress?

The German, with all his boasting about the "centre of culture," has not discovered that the beauty of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the royal troops near Lake Loffrey in March, 1815; that is strength of soul. The moral qualities with which we are concerned are no longer the same as in the days of the Greeks. Before this cockney sculpture was planned, there should have been a closer study of the history and philosophy of art in Berlin.

It is true that we in America are living in a glass house to some extent in these matters, but where in all Germany is there any modern sculpture to compare with our Nathan Hale, our Minute Man, and that most spirited bit of modern plastic art in all the world, the Shaw Monument in Boston? You cannot stand in front of it without keeping time, and here lips of bronze sing the song of patriotism till your heart thumps, and you are ready to throw up your hat as the splendid young figure and his negro soldiers march by -- and they do march by! It is almost a consolation for what Boston has done to that gallant soldier and humble servant of God, that modest gentleman, Phillips Brooks. In a statue to him they have travestied the virtues he expounded, slain the ideal of the Christ he preached, theatricalized the least theatrical of men, and placed this piece of mortifying misunderstanding in bronze under the very eaves of the house that grew out of his simple eloquence. There is in Leipsic a similar misdemeanor in a statue of Beethoven. He sits, naked to the waist, in a bronze chair, with a sort of bath-towel drapery of colored marble about his legs, and an eagle in front of him. He has a chauffeurish expression of anxious futility, as though he were about to run over the eagle.

Men are without great dreams in these days, and art is elaborate and fussy and self-conscious. The technical part of the work is predominant. One sees the artist holding up a mirror to himself as he works. Pygmalion congratulates the statue upon the fact that he carved it, instead of being lost in the love of creating. It is as though a lover should sing of himself instead of singing of his lady. The subtle poison of self-advertisement has crept in, and peers like a satyr from the picture and from the statue. Even the most prominent name in German music at this writing is that of a man who is notorious as an expert salesman of symphonic sensationalism.

Though the streets are so well kept, the buildings in these miles of new streets are flimsy-looking, and evidently the work of the speculative builder. The more pretentious buildings ape a kind of Nuremberg Renaissance style, and are as effective as a castle made of cardboard. This does not imply that there are not simple and solid buildings in Berlin and, in the case of the new library and a score of other buildings, worthy architecture; but the general impression is one of haste multiplied by plaster.

The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A certain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even on the balustrades of the castle, where the good Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Empress Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as Mars, and his wife as Minerva! On the facades of houses, on the bridges, on the roofs of apartment houses, on the hotels even, and scattered throughout the public gardens, are scores of statues, and they are for the most part what hastily ordered, swiftly completed art, born of the dollar instead of the pain and travail of love and imagination, must always be.

A certain literary snob taken to task by Doctor Parr for pronouncing the one-time capital of Egypt "Alexandria," with the accent on the long i, quoted the authority of Doctor Bentley. "Doctor Bentley and I," replied Doctor Parr, "may call it 'Alexandria,' but I should advise you to call it 'Alexandria.'" It was all very well for the Medici, to ornament their cities and their homes with the fruit of the great artistic springtime of the world, but I should strongly advise the Berliners to pronounce it "Alexandria" for some years to come. No matter how fervid the lover, nor how possessed he may be by his mistress, he cannot turn out every day, even,

"A halting sonnet of his own poor brain, Fashion'd to Beatrice."

All this pretentious over-ornamentation is cosmeticism, the powder and paint of the vulgarian striving to conceal by a futile advertisement her lack of refinement. Paris was teaching the world when there was no capital in Germany; London has been a commercial centre for a thousand years, and Oxford was a hundred years old before even the University of Prague, the first in Germany, was founded by Charles IV in 1348. You may like or dislike these cities, but, at any rate, they have a bouquet; Berlin has none.

When Germany deals with the inanimate and amenable factors of life, she brings the machinery of modern civilization well-nigh to the point of perfection. As a municipal and national housewife she has no equal, none. But art has nothing to do with brooms and dust-pans, and human nature is woven of surprises and emergencies, and what then? An interesting example in the streets of Berlin is the difference between the perfection of the street-cleaning, which deals with the inanimate and with accurately calculable factors, and the governing of the street traffic. Horses and men and motor-driven vehicles are not as dependable as blocks of pavement. When the traffic in the Berlin streets grows to the proportions of London, Paris, and New York, one wonders what will happen. Nowhere are there such broad, well-kept streets in which the traffic is so awkwardly handled.

The police are all, and must be, indeed, noncommissioned officers of the army, of nine years service, and not over thirty-five years of age. They are armed with swords and pistols by night, and in the rougher parts of the town with the same weapons by day as well. After ten years service they are entitled to a pension of twenty-sixtieths of their pay, with an increase of one-sixtieth for each further year of service. They are not under the city, but under state control, and the chief of police is a man of distinction, nearly always a nobleman, and nominated by, and in every case approved by, the Emperor. In Berlin he is appointed by the King of Prussia. He is a man of such standing that he may be promoted to cabinet rank. The men are well-turned out, of heavy build, very courteous to strangers, so far as my experience can speak for them, and quiet and self-controlled. Under the police president are one colonel of police, receiving from 6,000 to 8,500 marks, according to his length of service; 3 majors, receiving from 5,400 to 6,600 marks; 20 captains, receiving from 4,200 to 5,400 marks; 156 lieutenants, receiving from 3,000 to 4,500 marks; 450 sergeants, receiving from 1,650 to 2,300 marks; and 5,382 patrolmen, receiving from 1,400 to 2,100 marks. There are also some 300 mounted police, receiving from 1,400 to 2,600 marks. The colonel, majors, and captains receive 1,300 marks additional, and the lieutenants 800 marks additional, for house rent. The mounted police are well-horsed, but it is no slight to them to say, however, that their horses are not so well trained and well mannered, nor the men such skilful horsemen, as those of our mounted squad in New York, who, man for man and horse for horse, are probably unequalled anywhere else in the world.

The demand for these non-commissioned officers of nine years of army discipline, who cannot be called upon to serve in the army again, has grown with the growth of the great city, with its need of porters, watchmen, and the like, and so valuable are their services deemed that the present police force of Berlin is short of its proper number by some seven hundred men.

The examination of those about to become policemen extends over four weeks, and includes every detail of the multiplicity of duties, which ranges from the protection of the public from crime, down to tracking down truants from school, and the regulation of the books of the maid-servant class. The policeman who aspires to the rank of sergeant undergoes a still more rigorous examination, extending over twenty weeks of preparation, during which time he studies -- note this list, ye "young barbarians all at play," German, rhetoric, writing, arithmetic, common fractions, geography, history, especially the history of the House of Hohenzollern from the time of the margraves to the present time (!), political divisions of the earth, especially of Prussia and Germany, the essential features of the constitution of the Prussian Kingdom and German Empire, the organization and working of the various state authorities in Prussia and Germany, elementary methods of disinfection, common veterinary remedies, the police law as applicable to innumerable matters from the treatment of the drunk, blind, and lame, to evidences of murder, and the press law. The man who passes such an examination would be more than qualified to take a degree, at one of our minor colleges, if he knew English and the classics were not required, and could well afford to sniff disdainfully at the pelting shower of honorary degrees of Doctor of Divinity, which descend from the commencement platforms of our more girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy.

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was 2,494,722 marks; in 1890, 3,007,879 marks; in 1900, 6,065,975 marks; and in 1910, 8,708,165 marks.

I fancy that after an accident has taken place the literary, legal, and hygienic details are cared for by the Berlin police as nowhere else. In their management of the traffic they are distinctly lacking in decision and watchfulness. On the western side of the Brandenburger Tor there is seldom an hour, without a tangle of traffic which is entirely unnecessary if the police knew their business. On the Tiergarten Strasse, a rather narrow and much used thoroughfare in the fashionable part of the town, trucks, cabs, and other vehicles are not kept close to the curbs, often they drive along in pairs, slowing up all the traffic, and at the east end of the street is a corner which could easily be remedied by the building of a "refuge," and an authoritative policeman to guard the three approaches. Not once, but scores of times, at the very important corner of Unter den Linden and Wilhelm Strasse I have seen the policeman talking to friends on the curb, quite oblivious to a scramble of cabs, wagons, and motors at cross purposes in the street. Potsdamer Platz presents a difficult problem at all times of the day, especially when the crowds are coming from or going toward home, but a few ropes and iron standards, and four alert Irish policemen, would make it far plainer sailing than now it is. It is to be remembered, too, that the traffic is a mere dribble as compared to a torrent, when one remembers Paris, New York, and London. In 1909 the street accidents in Paris numbered 65,870, and there was one summons for every 77 motor taxicabs, but Paris is now without a rival as the dirtiest, worst-paved capital in Europe, and the home of social anarchy; a place where adventurous spirits will go soon rather than to Africa, or to the Rocky Mountains, for excitement in affrays with revolvers, vitriol, and chloroform.

In London, in 1909, there were 13,388 accidents. In Berlin there was a total of 4,895 accidents in 1900; 4,797 in 1905; and 4,233 in 1910. One hundred persons were killed in 1900; 115 in 1905; and 136 in 1910. In this connection it is to be said, that Berlin has fewer and much less adventurous inhabitants, very much less complicated traffic, much broader and better streets, and far fewer problems than the older cities. If the citizens of Berlin were anything like as capable of taking care of themselves in the streets, as they should be, there would be hardly any accidents at all. The new police regulation of the traffic has been only some four or five years in existence in its more rigid form, and perhaps neither people nor police are accustomed to it. Even then, out of the total of 4,233 accidents in 1910, 1,876 of them were caused by the street-railway cars. This shows of itself how light the traffic must be, for worse driving and more awkward pedestrians one would go far to find.

The cost of Berlin housekeeping increases by leaps and bounds. The total city expenses were: 45,221,988 marks in 1880; 89,364,270 in 1890; 121,405,356 in 1900; and 355,424,614 in 1910. The debt of Berlin has risen from 126,161,605 marks in 1880, and 272,912,350 in 1900, to 475,799,231 in 1910, with a very considerable addition voted for 1912. In the ten years alone between 1897 and 1907 the debt of German cities including only those with a population of more than 10,000, increased by $1,050,000,000. Municipal expenditure in Paris has risen in the last ten years from $59,200,000 to $76,000,000. The budget expenditure of France has reached $1,040,000,000. In 1898 it was only $600,000,000.

It cannot be expected that the best-kept, cleanest, and most orderly cities in the world, and there need be no hesitation in saying this of the German cities, should not spend much money, and the states in which they are situated much money as well. The various states of the empire spent, according to a report of four years ago, $1,352,500,000; and the empire itself $738,250,000, or a total of $2,090,750,000. From the various state or empire controlled enterprises, such as railways, forests, mines, post and telegraph, imperial printing-office, and so on, the states and empire received a net income of $216,525,000, and the balance was, of course, raised by direct and indirect taxation.

One may put appropriately enough under this heading, the invaluable and unpaid services of a host of honorary officials, who render expert service both in the state and city governments. There are over ten thousand honorary officials in the city of Berlin alone, more than three thousand of whom serve under the school authorities. They are chosen from citizens of standing, education, wealth, and ability, and assist in all the departments with advice and expert knowledge, and sit upon the various committees. The German citizen has not only his pocket taxed, but his patriotism also, and a capital philosophy of government this implies.

A friend, a large landholder in Saxony, gives, between his services as a reserve officer in the army and his magisterial and other duties, something over nine weeks of his time to the state every year, and he is by no means an exception, he tells me. A certain amount of this is required of him by the state, with a heavy fine for nonperformance of these duties. The same is true of the many members of the various standing committees in the cities. Each citizen is compelled to contribute a certain proportion of his mental and moral prowess to the service of his state and city, but he receives a return for it in his beautifully kept city, in the educational advantages, in the theatres, concerts, opera, and in the peaceful orderliness, the value of which only the foreigner can fully appreciate.

Almost all the court theatres, for example, throughout Germany are under a director who works in harmony with the reigning prince. The King of Prussia gives for his theatres in Berlin, Wiesbaden, Hanover, and Cassel, more than $625,000 a year from his private purse; the Duke of Anhalt, $75,000 a year to the Dessauer theatre. The players have a sure position under responsible and intelligent government, and feel themselves to be not mere puppets, but educational factors with a certain pride and dignity in their work.

There are more Shakespeare plays given in Germany in a week than in all the English-speaking countries together in a year. This is by no means an exaggeration. The theatre is looked upon as a school. Fathers and mothers arrange that their older children as well as themselves shall attend the theatre all through the winter, and subscribe for seats as we would subscribe to a lending library. During the last year in Germany, the plays of Schiller were given 1,584 times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the music-dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times. There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when an Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugarcoats Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to go, in the belief that we are after all not wasting our time, since the performance tastes a little of the more gorgeous music halls. The scenery and costumes are sufficient, and the performance always worth intelligent attention, for the reason that both the director and his players have given time and scholarship to its interpretation. The acting is often indifferent as compared to the French stage, but it is at least always in earnest and intelligent. The theatre prices in Berlin are high, even as compared with New York prices, but in other cities and towns of Germany cheaper than in England, France, or America.

Pericles passed a law in Athens by which each citizen was granted two oboli, one to pay for his seat at the theatre, the other to provide himself with refreshment. In Athens the play began at 6 or 7 A. M., and during the morning three tragedies and a satirical drama were played, followed in the afternoon by a comedy. The theatre of Dionysius seated 30,000 people, who brought their cushions, food, and drink, and occasionally used them to express their dislike of the performance or the performers. At one of the larger industrial towns in Germany, during a Sunday of my visit, there were three performances; one at 11 A. M., of a patriotic melodrama, "Glaube und Heimat"; another, at 3.30 P. M., of "Der Freischuetz"; and another, at 7.30 P. M., of Sudermann's play, "Die Ehre." The prices of seats for the morning performance ranged from eight cents to forty-five cents; a little more in the afternoon; and from seventeen cents to $1.15 in the evening. At the performance I attended the house was crowded and attentive. I was not enough of an Athenian to attend all three. Even at the Music Hall in Berlin, where, as in other cities, the thinly covered salacious is ladled out to the animal man, there was a capital stage caricature of Oedipus, which atoned for the customary ewig Legliche, which now rules in these resorts. If for some untoward reason women ceased to have legs, what would the British and American theatrical trust managers do!

The German takes his theatre and his music, as from the beginnings of these it was intended we all should do. They are not a distraction merely, but an education, an education of the senses, and through the senses of the whole man. There are music-lovers and serious playgoers in America; but for the most part our theatres cater to, and are filled by, a public seeking a soothing and condimented mental atmosphere, in which to finish digestion. Theatrical salmagundi is served everywhere, and seems to be the dish best suited to the American aesthetic palate as thus far educated. We cannot complain, since other wares would be quickly provided did we but ask for them.