764 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion of the German language by foreigners, simply that Germans 

 may enjoy a greater sense of separation from and doubtless of 

 superiority to the rest of the world. To the natural abruptness 

 of German manners there has been added, we are told, a decided 

 flavor of aggressiveness which was not characteristic of them be- 

 fore the war. National self-assertiveness has become, the writer 

 states, "a positive cult. It is encouraged," he adds, "by the au- 

 thorities ; it is fostered in the schools ; perhaps some day it will 

 form a subject for examination." 



The most serious injury, however, has been done to the spirit 

 of liberty. Prosecutions for lese majesty are the order of the 

 day, and the charges on which such prosecutions are based are 

 often of the most trivial kind. Editors accused of this crime for 

 their criticism of the Government or the emperor are " treated 

 in many respects like ordinary felons." They are not allowed out 

 on bail before trial, but are kept in confinement, and at trial are 

 brought up in prison dress. " Any adverse criticism of the Kai- 

 ser's utterances is a penal offense. Praise or silence these are 

 the alternatives." And yet, as Mr. Evans very truly observes, 

 there has never perhaps been a monarch whose speeches more 

 loudly challenged criticism. Such, however, is the price, or part 

 of the price, which the German nation is paying for success in a 

 great aggressive war. It is not only in political matters that the 

 utmost restriction of political liberty prevails. " It is the same 

 in everything. There is little possibility of independence in 

 speech or action. The police are always at your elbow ; and woe 

 to you if you do not carry out their injunctions to the letter ! " He 

 adds : " To live in Germany always seems to me like a return to 

 the nursery. ... In fine, generally speaking, the aspect of affairs 

 in modern Germany is by no means exhilarating. It seems to me 

 that it may be summed up in a few words : an enormous in- 

 crease of power and influence abroad, but at home less comfort, 

 less liberty, less happiness." 



It did not fall within the scope of the article from which we 

 have been quoting to refer to any of the political events that 

 have marked the interval between the termination of the Franco- 

 German War and the present time ; but an instructive commen- 

 tary on the spirit which warfare, particularly successful warfare, 

 breeds is aft'orded by the fact that five years after the close of 

 the war the victorious and all-powerful German nation was only 

 prevented by the peremptory prohibition of the Czar of Russia 

 from falling again, without a shadow of justification, upon its 

 weakened adversary, with the avowed intention of so crushing 

 and maiming it, by further loss of population and territory, as to 

 reduce it definitively to the rank of a second-class power. We 

 have said " without a shadow of justification"; but to the mill- 



