Chapter 18

We have, first and foremost, General Keim, Keim the invincible, Keim the insatiable, Keim of the Army-League, Keim the arch hater of England and of Russia and of France, Keim the jewel of the fighting Junker aristocracy of Prussia--the band of warriors who despise all common soldiers--"white slave" conscripts, and with them all civilians, who at the best are only potential common soldiers. "War, war, on both frontiers," is Keim's obsessing vision. War being inevitable and salutary, it cannot come too soon. The duty of hate, he urges on all the youth of Germany, maidens as well as men. It is said that Keim is the only man of the day who can maintain before an audience of Christians such a proposition as this: "We must learn to hate, and to hate with method. A man counts little who cannot hate to a purpose. Bismarck was hate."

From Gaston Choisy's clever character sketch of General Keim, we learn that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no note. He has no ability as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he has: "the courage of his vulgarity." "At the age of 68, suffering from Bright's Disease, he travelled all Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering everywhere for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies susceptible of aiding the Cause." "Without Bismarck's authority, he had his manner--a mixture of baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied cynicism and a lack of conscience." "How generous are circumstances! The spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an _enfant terrible_, an endless flow of language, an endless course of words."

To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his own country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: "Keims and Keimlings unfortunately are all about us. But they are a vanishing minority." The great culture peoples do not hate one another. ("Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen einander nicht.")

Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his _Germany and the Next War_, the need to obliterate France, while giving the needed chastisement to England. A retired officer of cavalry, said to be disgruntled through failure of promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy figure, a writer without inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has never taken him seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival Keim, but the mediæval absurdities and serious extravagances in his defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the rival lands. In spite of his pleas, "historical, biological and philosophical," for war, he is a man of peace, for which, in the words of General Eichhorn, "one's own sword is the best and strongest pledge."

Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as do doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare of Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern incident has thrown a great light. "Other lands may possess an army," a Prussian officer is quoted as saying, "the army possesses Germany."

The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated in the movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be two moving forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the financial interests which center about the house of Krupp. The purposes of Pangermanism seem to be, on the one hand, to prevent parliamentary government in Germany; and on the other, to take part in whatever goes on in the world outside. Just now, the control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of "the nightmare of Europe." The journalists called Conservative find that "Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as a supplement to her power on land and sea, if she is to exercise the influence she deserves." And a vigorous foreign policy is but another name for the use of the War System as a means of pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers containing it shows their affiliation with the "extreme right," a small minority in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this sort--the _Tägliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the _Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who "casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of æsthetics, the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force shall be felt everywhere under the sun.

Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher," "Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the moon.

Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with the _Münchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_, avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.

We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of Germany, a nation perforce military because the people cannot help themselves. So far as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique of "sleepless watchdogs" whose influence is waning, and would be non-existent were it not for the military organization which holds Germany by the throat, but which has pushed the German people just as far as it dares.

A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social traditions, may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war is practically the same in all the countries of Western Europe. It is in its way the test of European civilization. Each nation has its "sleepless watchdogs," and those of one nation fire the others, when the proper war scares are set in motion by the great unscrupulous group of those who profit by them. The war promoters, the apostles of hate, form a brotherhood among themselves, and their success in frightening one nation reacts to make it easier to scare another.

This the reader may remember, as a final lesson. There is no civilized nation which longs for war. There is nowhere a reckless populace clamoring for blood. The schools have done away with all that. The spread of commerce has brought a new Earth with new sympathies and new relations, in which international war has no place.

If you are sure that your own nation has no design to use violence on any other, you may be equally sure that no other has evil designs on you. The German fleet is not built as a menace to England; whether it be large or small should concern England very little. Just as little does the size of the British fleet bear any concern to Germany. The German fleet is built against the German people. The growth of the British army and navy has in part the same motive. Armies and navies hold back the waves of populism and democracy. They seem a bulwark against Socialism. But in the great manufacturing and commercial nations, they will not be used for war, because they cannot be. The sacrifice appalls: the wreck of society would be beyond computation.

But still the sleepless watchdogs bark. It is all that they can do, and we should get used to them. In our own country, whatever country it may be, we have our own share of them, and some of them bear distinguished names. No other nation has any more, and no nation takes them really seriously, any more than we do. And one and all, their bark is worse than their bite, and the cost of feeding them is doubtless worse than either.

EN CASSEROLE

_Special to our Readers_

Those of you who have not received your REVIEWS on time will probably now find a double interest in the article in the last number, on _Our Government Subvention to Literature_. In conveying periodicals so cheaply, not only is Uncle Sam engaged in a bad job, but he is doing it cheaply, and consequently badly, and he has more of it than he can well handle. _He is at length carrying them as freight_, and most of you know what that means. We are receiving complaints of delay on all sides, and an appreciable part of the unwelcome subvention Uncle Sam is giving us, goes in sending duplicates of lost copies. We don't acknowledge any obligation, legal or moral, to do this; but we love our subscribers--more or less disinterestedly--and try to do them all the kinds of good we can. Partly to enable us to do that, as long as the subvention is given, we follow the example of the excellent Pooh Bah, and put our pride (and the subvention) into our pockets. Even if we did not love our subscribers so, we should have to do the pocketing all the same, because our competitors do. Competitors are always a very shameless sort of people.

We wish, however, that Uncle Sam would keep his subvention in his own pocket, and so lead to a higher plane all competitors in the magazine business, including some of those who don't want to rise to a higher plane. The best of such a proceeding on his part would be that he would also, through the complicated influences described in the article referred to encourage up to a higher plane those who write for popular magazines. Those who write for THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW are, of course, on the highest possible plane already. This remark is made solely for the benefit of readers taking up the REVIEW for the first time. To others it is superfluous, and if there is anything we try to avoid, it is, as we have so many times to tell volunteer contributors, superfluities. Even popularity we do not try to avoid, but--!

The foregoing paragraph was written with little thought of what was coming to be added to it. You and we have something to be proud of. Our REVIEW has been doing its part in saving all Europe from the waste of hundreds of millions of money, and the literatures of all Europe from a degradation like that through which our own is passing. Read the following letter:

Dear Mr. [Editor]:

I have already sent a line through ---- thanking you for the copy of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, which you were good enough to send me, but I should like to repeat my thanks to you again direct, and at the same time, tell you how the REVIEW has been of service to European publishers.

The article in the last number entitled _Our Government Subvention to Literature_ naturally interested me very much from a personal point of view, but the statistics you give showing the effect of second class matter rate on book sales was very valuable to me as the representative of the English Publishers on the Executive Committee of the International Publishers Congress.

At the Congress held at Budapest last June, a resolution was adopted instructing the Congress to press for a reduced rate of postage on periodicals, and an international stamp. The steps to be taken in order to carry out this resolution were discussed at the meeting of the Committee last week held at Leipzig, when I produced the copy of your article, and gave the Committee a summary of the statistics. The result was the unanimous decision to take no further steps in the matter.

I tremble to think of what might have happened if I had not had your article before me, for the point of view which you have put forward was one that had not occurred to anyone else connected with the Congress, and if the resolution had not been cut out at this last meeting of the Executive Committee, it would have gone before the Postal Conference which is to be held in Madrid this autumn, backed by practically every European country.

I feel we all owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing out the facts so clearly, and believe that you will like to know what has taken place.

While we are not slow to take all the credit that our supporters and ourselves are entitled to in this matter, we should be very slow tacitly to accept the lion's share of it, which is due to Colonel C.W. Burrows of Cleveland, who supplied all of the facts and nearly all of the expression of the article in question, and who has for years, lately as President of the One Cent Letter Postage League, been devoting himself with unsparing energy and self-sacrifice to stopping the waste of money and capacity that the mistaken outbreak of paternalism we are discussing has brought upon the country.

Demos is a good fellow--when he behaves himself, and that generally means when he is not abused or flattered; but how supremely ridiculous, not to say destructive, he is when he gets to masquerading in the robes of the scholar or the judge; and how criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal aggrandisement by dangling those robes before him.

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Our modesty has been so anesthetized by the preceding letter, that it permits us to show you, in strict confidence of course, a paragraph from another. A new subscriber, apparently going it blind on the recommendation of a friend, writes:

"I am told it is the best gentleman's magazine in the United States."

Now, somehow, "gentleman" is a word that we are very chary of using. We couldn't put that remark on an advertising page, but perhaps there is no inconsistency in putting it here, and confessing that we like it--and that we even suspect that we have always had a subconscious idea that it was just what we were after--that it includes, or ought to include, about everything that we are trying to accomplish. In any interpretation, it is certainly an encouragement to keep pegging away.

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Most of our readers probably remember a letter on pp. 432-3 of the _Casserole_ of the April-June number, from an individual who thought we were trying to humbug the wage-receiving world into a false and dangerous contentment with existing conditions. This inference was probably drawn from our insistent promulgation of the belief that a man's fortune depends more upon himself than upon his conditions.

As a contrast to that remarkable letter, it is a great pleasure to call attention to the following still more remarkable one. It is from a printer--not one in our employ.

I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of the REVIEW, both from a literary and mechanical standpoint. As a "worker," "a member of the Union," it might be inferred that I endorse the views of the critics given on page 432 of the second number. Not so. It is such views as his that harm the unthinking--those who think capital is the emblem of wickedness.

I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor, and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth to his employer will raise him above the "common level." All this rot about a "ruling oligarchy" "grinding down the poorer class" is dangerous. The man who has no ambition above ditch digging, and who endeavors to throw out as little dirt in a day as he possibly can, will always be one of "the submerged." It lies with each one--outside of unavoidable physical or mental infirmities--whether he shall rise or sink.

Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW. I "take" and read twenty to twenty-five magazines and for over forty years have been trying to educate myself to a right way of thinking, and the result is I believe as above briefly outlined.

Especially good is _The Greeks on Religion and Morals_, also _The Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National Pastime_, and _Our Government Subvention to Literature_.

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Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding this number as full as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the Mexican situation. In one sense we are disappointed ourselves: for we had made arrangements for at least one article of that general nature from one of our best qualified contributors; but when it came time to write it (speaking by the calendar), he showed the excellence of his qualifications by saying that, considering the situation and the function of this REVIEW, it was _not_ time--that the situation had not yet become mature enough or broad enough for any general conclusions--for any treatment beyond that already well given by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and that they were giving all the details called for. We will wait, then, and try to philosophize when the time comes.

We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our part, this number has turned out "seasonable" in another sense, and hope you will find it so. Witness the articles on _Chautauqua_, and _Railway Junctions_, and _Tips_ (entitled _A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism_) and several others.

_Philosophy in Fly Time_

In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the chief source of American inventiveness--the universal habit of whittling--every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has neither flies nor jackknife.

Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged with an amount of bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians alive to enjoy the later ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a crusade against him; and now the boys can't have any more fun with him--that is, only good boys can--the kind that catch him with illusive traps, for a cent a hundred. The other kind of boys may occasionally be sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it's pretty poor hunting: for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him, he is off: so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we boys used to, is virtually impossible.

Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things--the brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis--the brute that has no wings, and can't get ahead more than about once his own length in a second--that this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs, hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?

Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our investigators may find an answer to the farther question: (III) How, if a tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so long survived?

To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don't like 'em, especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this REVIEW.

_Setting Bounds to Laughter_

That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design. For liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only in an age of moral heroism. The present is no heroic age, and hence our personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without regret. The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to weigh and to lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to laugh.

It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance of organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men and women were hectored into believing that one should weep, not laugh, over the absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were warned that it is unseemly and unChristian to laugh at a fellow-man's discomfiture--an awkward social situation, a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a poem spoilt by a printer's stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma that to laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently grown into vigor multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial, national and professional. Not many years ago a censorship of Irish jokes was established, and this was soon followed by an index expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our colored fellow citizens promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the expense of their race are "in bad taste"; and country life enthusiasts solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing short of national disasters. A recent press report informs us that the suffragette joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits throughout the country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic servants, stenographers, politicians, college professors, and clergymen are organizing to establish the right of being ridiculous without exciting laughter.

But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your intellect alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy. You can not laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh at a Hindoo or a Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips over the conduct of a Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are beginning to find something comic in the Italian, because you are beginning to know him. And all the world laughs at the Irishman, because all the world knows him and loves him.

When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia, carrying a book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just one person observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him. As our old school readers narrated, with naïve surprise, this maiden was destined to become Franklin's faithful wife. And yet psychology should have led us to expect such a result. The stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults before the eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of the sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were introduced to Bret Harte's gambler:

For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.