Chapter 21

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 supine justice and sentimental executive, as when politics can even bend our President to grant silly pardons, with baleful results upon the doings of other wealthy criminals. We use as large an amount of habit-forming drugs per capita as is used in the Chinese empire, so says Dr. Wright, who was commissioned by the State Department to gather facts on this subject. We import and consume 500,000 pounds of opium yearly, when 70,000 pounds, including its derivatives and preparations, should suffice for our medical needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000 ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured, and consumed, although 15,000 ounces would supply every legitimate need. America collected $340,000,000 from tariff taxes in 1911, and $40,000,000 of this from tobacco and alcoholics.

My readers may look back to the title of this chapter and ask: What has all this to do with the status of women in Germany? I have told you in these few pages the whole secret. The men are not independent; what can you expect of the women! The men have, until very lately, had no surplus wealth or leisure, and have now, to all appearance, little surplus vitality or energy. Germany is getting to be a very tired-looking nation. One hears almost as little laughter in Germany as in India. Gayety and laughter are the bubbles and foam on the glass of life, proving that it is charged with energy. Do not believe me, although I have carefully watched many thousands of Germans in all parts of Germany taking their pleasure and their ease; come over and see for yourself! These thousands at their simple recreations are not gay. I grant the dangers we run by the opposite policy, but these are the results we have to fear from the German methods.

It is the men who must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to spend, and more of luxury than is good for them; and all too many of the underbred among them paint and bejewel and begown themselves to imitate the lecherous barbarism of the too free. But one of the greatest ladies in Germany tells me, "I am never so flattered as when I am taken for an American!" I can pay her no handsomer compliment than to reply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our women revive the drooping dukedoms of England, and few will maintain that some of them at least are unsuited to the position. I have seen them in Germany as Frau Graefin this or that, and not only their appearance but their house-keeping machinery, running noiselessly and accurately, proves that there is something more than dollars behind them.

One of the rare human beings whom I have known, who has at the same time the characteristics of the generous comrade, the good fellow, and the fine gentleman; who in moral courage in time of terrible strain, or in physical courage when one's back is to the wall, never quailed, is an American woman; and thousands of my countrymen will say the same.

You cannot produce this type without freedom, without giving them opportunity, and taking the risks that are inherent in giving free scope to personal prowess. But they are not the women whom our blatant newspapers exploit, nor the women who buy the British aristocracy to launch them socially, nor the women who pervade the continental hotels and restaurants, nor the women whom as a rule the foreigner has the opportunity to meet. They are the women who have helped us to absorb the 21,000,000 aliens who have entered America since the Civil War; the women who stood behind us when we fought out that war for four years, leaving a million men on the fields of battle; the women who in the realm of housekeeping, to come down to practical levels, have revolutionized these duties and turned a drudgery into an art as have no other women in the world. The best answer the American can make to the luxurious lawlessness of some of our women, is to point to the house-keeping and home-making of his compatriots, not only at home but right here in Germany. Fifty years ago it could not have been said, but to-day there is no doubt in my mind that American house-keeping is the best in the world. In comfort, in the smooth running of the household machinery, in good food and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class by ourselves in matters of housewifery.

The English attitude of women toward men is somewhat that of comradeship, and once married the man's comfort is looked after with some care; the American attitude of women toward men, in the more luxurious circles, is often, I admit, that of a spoiled child toward a gift-bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship her along the lines of a restricted rubric; but in Germany the subordination, the unquestioning and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance of inferiority have not only softened the men but robbed the women of even sufficient independence to make them the helpmates that they try to be. There have been women of social and even political influence: Bettina von Arnim, Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel Varnhagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems to have been a soothing adjunct of the Foreign Office. It is rather as admirers than as executives that they shine. Their attitude toward the great Goethe, and his nonchalant polygamy toward them, is difficult for us to understand and approve.

"The gentle Henrietta then, And a third Mary next did reign, And Joan and Jane and Andria; And then a pretty Thomasine, And then another Katherine, And then a long et cetera."

No real man is a misogynist, for not to like women is not to be a man. There are, however, many men, both in Germany and out of it, who greatly dislike sham women; that is, women who shirk their functional responsibilities. This form of dislike is a healthy instinct. Women are given the greatest and most inspiring of all tasks: to make men; and a woman who cannot make a man, by giving birth to one, or by developing one as son or husband, has failed more deplorably even than a man who cannot make a living. This task of theirs constitutes a superiority impossible to deny or to overcome. A woman, therefore, who craves man's activities and standards is as foolish as though a wheat-field should long to be a bakery. Most healthy-minded men hold this view, though some of us may think that German men overemphasize it.

The coarse sentimentality of the lower classes has been noted, but it is not confined to them. The premarital relations of all but the most cultured and experienced, are marked by a mawkish sweetness which is all the more noticeable in contrast with the dull routine of saving and slaving which follows. She begins by being photographed sitting in her hero's lap, and ends by sitting on the less comfortable chair to darn his socks and to tend his babies. There are women enthroned, and who deserve to be, in Germany as in other countries; but taken in the mass, speaking in hundreds of thousands, it is not an inaccurate picture to say that the women are not taken seriously in Germany except as mothers and servants.

The census of 1910 shows that there are 32,040,166 men in Germany and 32,885,827 women, or 845,661 more women than men. The number of men in proportion to the number of women is steadily increasing in Germany, showing that the habits of the men are more and more feminine, that the state provides for them and protects them, and that the women take good care of them.

In a virile state, where the men take risks, where they play hazardous games, where they travel and seek adventure, where they emigrate to seek new opportunities, the women will greatly outnumber the men. The excess of females in England and Wales in 1871 was 594,000; in 1881, 694,000; in 1891, 896,000; in 1911, 1,178,000. The United Kingdom has the largest surplus of women of leisure in the world, and just now they are taking advantage of their numerical superiority in the most delightful and comical feminine fashion. They are proving their right to assist in coercing others to obey the laws, by disobeying the laws themselves. By pouring vitriol on golf-greens, by pinning their defiance to these dishevelled greens with hair-pins, they propose to provoke the recalcitrant to recognition of their right to pin their names to seats in the House of Commons. It is all so sweetly feminine, that the stranger is astonished to hear such women dubbed unwomanly. Pray, what could be more womanly in England, than to pin a protest to a golf-green with a hair-pin!

The German army, which is in itself a school of hygiene for the man, where the death-rate is the lowest of any army in Europe, and the many provisions for the state care of the population, all go to coddle the men and protect them. The various forms of labor insurance alone in Germany cost the state over $250,000 a day, and if we include the amount expended in compensation in all its forms, the yearly bill of the state for the care of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to nearly $170,000,000. No wonder that between the care of a grandmotherly state, and the attentions of a subservient womankind, the male population increases. I sometimes question whether there is not something of the hot-house culture about this male crop. Certainly consumption and other diseases are very wide-spread. A very detailed and careful investigation of certain forms of weakness is being made by our Rockefeller Institute at this time, and if I am not mistaken in the results of what these investigations have thus far disclosed, it will be found that Germany has her full share of rottenness to deal with. To those who care to corroborate these hints with facts I recommend the reading of certain recent numbers of the hygienic Rundschau, a German technical magazine of repute.

There is a lack of vitality and elasticity, a stodgy, plodding way of working, much indulgence in gregarious eating and drinking, and very mild forms of exercise and holiday-making, comparatively little sport, almost no game-playing where boys and men hustle one another about as in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours of application, from the school-boy to the ministers of state, all of which tend to and do produce a physical lack of alertness, vivacity, and audacity in the men of practically all classes.

The way to see the people of a country is to stand by the hour in the large industrial towns and watch them as they go to and from their work; to watch them flocking in and out of railway stations, and at work in large numbers in the fields of Saxony, Silesia, and other parts of Prussia; to spend hours, and I admit that they are tedious hours, strolling through factories, ship-yards, mines, and offices, paying no attention to the talk of your guide, but studying the faces and physique of the men and women. Having done this, an impartial observer is bound to remark that industrial and commercial Germany is taking a tremendous toll for the rapid progress she has made. It may be no worse here than elsewhere, but neither has the problem of a healthy, happy, toiling population been satisfactorily solved here, though perhaps better here than elsewhere. I have heard the women and girls in factories singing at their work, but the bird is no less caged because it sings.

Men who ought to know better set an example of long hours of confinement at their work which is quite unnecessary. They tell you with pride that they are at it from eight or nine in the morning till seven and often till later at night. That is something that no sane man ought to be proud of. On investigation you find that in industrial and commercial circles, and in the offices of the state, men take two hours for luncheon and then return to work till nightfall. Two hours in the open air at the end of the day could be managed easily, but they do not want it. There is no vitality left for a game, for exercise, for a bath, and a change.

They drug themselves with work, and slip away to the theatre, to a concert, to a Verein or circle, unwashed, ungroomed, and physically torpid, and the great mass of the population, high and low alike, outside the army officers, look it.

The army officer's career is dependent upon his mental and physical vigor. The cylinder is quickly handed him and the helmet taken away if he grows too fat and too slow physically and mentally. There is no nepotism, no favoritism, and on reaching a certain rank he goes, if he falls below the standard required, and consequently he keeps himself fit. But a huge bureaucracy, with its stupid promotions by years and not by ability, with its government stroke, and its dangling pensions, positively breeds lassitude, laziness, and dulness. You may see it on every hand in government offices, in the railway and postal services, where men are evidently kept on not for their fitness but by the tyranny of the system. High officials admit as much.

In the little state of Prussia the railways pay well and are well managed, but they are clogged to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary employees, and were the system spread over the United States the chaos in a dozen years would be almost irreparable, and even here the complaints are many and vigorous. Probably one male over twenty-five years of age out of every four is in government employ. This alone would account for the general air of lassitude which is one of the most noticeable features of German life. The Germans as a whole are beginning to look tired. It is a German, not an Italian or a Frenchman, the philosopher Nietzsche, who writes: "Seit es Menschen giebt, hat der Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut; das allein ist unsere Erbsuende."

There has been a great change in the status of women in the last twenty-five years. The apophthegm of Pericles, or rather of Thucydides, "that woman is best who is least spoken of among men, either for good or evil," is not so rigidly enforced. Increased wealth throughout Germany has left the German woman more leisure from the drudgery of the home. She is not so wholly absorbed by the duties of nurse, cook, and house-maid as she once was. But even to-day her economies and her ability to keep her house with little outside assistance are amazing. Some of the most delightful meals I have taken, have been in professional households, where small incomes made it necessary that wife and daughters should do most of the work.

The German professor has his faults, but in his own simple home, the work of the day behind him, his family about him at his well-filled but not luxurious board, with some member of the family not unlikely to be an accomplished musician and with his own unrivalled store of learning at your service, when he raises his glass to you, filled with his best, with a smile and a hearty "Prosit," he is hard to beat as a host, to my thinking. Perhaps there is nothing like overindulgence to make one crave simplicity, and no doubt this accounts for the fact that the really great ones of earth are satisfied and happy with enough, and abhor too much.

They tell me that the Dienstmaedchen is no longer what she used to be, but to my untutored eye her duties still seem to be as comprehensive as those of a Sioux squaw, and her performances unrivalled. As is to be expected, Germany is not blessed with trained servants. They are helpers rather than professional servants. In the scores of houses, public and private, where I have been a guest, only in one or two had the servants more than an alphabetical knowledge of what was due to one's clothes and shoes. The servants are rigidly protected by the state: they must have so much time off, they cannot be dismissed without weeks of warning, and they themselves carry books with their moral and professional biographies therein, which are always open to the inspection of the police; and they must all be insured.

In many towns, and cities too, there are hospitals and bands of nurses who for a small annual payment undertake to take over and care for a sick servant. If the doctor prescribes a "cure" for your servant, away she goes at the expense of the state to be taken care of. Wages are very small as compared with ours. Ten dollars a month for a cook, five for a house-maid, ten for a man-servant, forty to fifty for a chauffeur, and of course more in the larger and more luxurious establishments; though a chef who serves dinners for forty and fifty in an official household I know is content with twenty dollars a month. A nursery governess can be had for twelve, and a well-educated English governess for twenty dollars a month. Even these wages are higher than ten years ago. To be more explicit, in a small household where three servants are kept the cook receives 30 marks, the maid-servant 25 marks, and the nursery governess 35 marks a month. In the household of an official of some means the man-servant receives 45 marks, the cook 30 marks, and the maid-servant 30 marks a month. When dinners or other entertainments are given, outside help is called in. In the household of a rich industrial, whose family consists of himself, wife, and four children, the man-servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200, the cook 45, the lady's maid 35, the house-maid 25, kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks a month.

I carry away with me delightful pictures of German households, big, little, and medium; and though it does not fit in nicely with my main argument, households whose mistresses were patterns of what a chatelaine should be. But I must leave that loop-hole for the critics, for I am trying only to tell the truth and to be fair, and not to be scientific or to bolster up a thesis.

I can see the big castle, centuries old, with its rambling buildings winging away from it on every side, and in the court-yard its regal-looking mistress positively garlanded with her dozen children. There is no sign of the decadence of the aristocracy here. We sit down twenty or more every day at the family luncheon. Tutors and governesses are at every turn. A French abbe, as silken in manner and speech as his own soutane, bowls over all my prejudices of creed and custom, as I watch him rule with the lightest of hands and the softest of voices a brood of termagant small boys; to turn from this to a game of billiards, and from that to the Merry Widow waltz on the piano, that we may dance. An aide-de-camp trained in India and a French abbe, I am convinced that these are the apotheosis of luxury in a large household. My Protestant brethren would, I am sure, throw their prejudices to the winds could they spend an evening with my friend, Monsieur l'Abbe! Nor Erasmus, nor Luther, nor Calvin would have had the heart to burn him. He is just as good a fellow as we are, knows far more, can turn his hand to anything from photography to the driving of a stubborn pony, knows his world as few know it, and yet is inviolably not of it. I have chatted with Jesuit priests teaching our Western Indians; I have travelled with a preaching friar in Italy on his round of sermonizing; I have seen them in South America, in India, China, and Japan, and I recognize and acclaim their self-denying prowess, but no one of them was a more dangerous missionary than my last-named friend among them, Monsieur l'Abbe!

"For ever through life the Cure goes With a smile on his kind old face-- With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, And his green umbrella-case."

There was a profusion at this castle, a heartiness of welcome, a patriarchal attitude toward the countless servants and satellites, an acreage of roaming space in the buildings, that smacked of the feudalism back to which both the castle and the family dated. How many Englishmen or Americans who sniff at German civilization ever see anything of the inside of German homes? Very few, I should judge, from the lame talk and writing on the subject. Let us go from this mediaeval setting for modern comfort to a smaller establishment. Here a miniature Germania, with blue eyes and golden hair, presides, looking like a shaft of sunlight in front of you as she leads the way about the paths of her gloomy forest. In these, and in not a few other houses, there is little luxury, no waste, a certain Spartan air of training, but abundance of what is necessary and a cheery and frank welcome.

I sometimes think the Germans themselves lose much by their rather overdeveloped tendency to meet not so often in one another's homes as in a neutral place: a restaurant, a garden, a Verein or circle, of which there is an interminable number. You certainly get to know a man best and at his best in his own home, and you never get to know a wife and a mother out of that environment; for a woman is even more dependent than a man upon the sympathetic atmosphere that frames her. I should be, after my experience, and I am, the last person in the world to say that the Germans are not hospitable; but there is much less visiting even among themselves, and much less of constant reception of strangers in their homes, than with us. Habit, lack of wealth, lack of trained servants, and a certain proud shyness, and in some cases indifference and a lack of vitality which welcomes the trouble of being host, account for this. No doubt, too, the old habit of economy remains even when there is no longer the same necessity for it, and saving and gayety do not go well together. In Geldsachen hurt die Gemuethlichkeit auf.

I should be sorry to spoil my picture by the overemphasis of details. The reader will not see what I have intended to paint, if he gets only an impression of caution, of economy, of sordidness and fatigue. No nation that gives birth to an untranslatable word like Gemuethlichkeit can be without that characteristic. The English words "home" and "comfort," the French word "esprit," and the German word Gemuethlichkeit have no exact equivalents in other languages. This in itself is a sure sign of a quality in the nation which bred the word. The difficulty lies in the fact that another language is another life.

The Germans are not cheerful as we are cheerful; they are not happy as we are happy; they are not free as we are free; they are not polite as we are polite; they are not contented as we are contented; and no one for a moment who is even an amateur observer and an amateur philologist combined would claim that the three words, love and amour and Liebe mean the same thing. No word in the English language is used so often from the pulpit as the word love, but this cannot be said of the use of amour in France or of Liebe in Germany. Nations pour themselves into the tiny moulds of words and give us statuettes of themselves. The Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, and the Teuton have filled these three words with a certain vague philosophy of themselves, a hazy composite photograph of themselves. No one writer or painter, no one incident, no one tragedy, no one day or year of history has done this. To us, love is the coldest, cleanest, as it is perhaps the most loyal of the three. L'amour sounds to us seductive, enticing, often indeed little more than lust embroidered to make a cloak for ennui. Liebe is to us friendly, soft, childlike.