GERMANY 



3497 



GERMANY 



All this was the work of Bis- 

 marck, who, aided by ambitious 

 soldiers like von Moltke and von 

 Roon, set himself to make the 

 Hohenzollern dynasty of Prussia 

 the most powerful monarchical 

 caste in Europe, and to endow it 

 with an empire that should hold 

 the balance, and therefore the prin- 

 cipal share, of European power. 

 From this conception, which Bis- 

 marck's genius for unscrupulous 

 statecraft was able to realize, the 

 new rulers of Germany went on to 

 dream of world-power. 



Outside Germany proper over 

 one million sq. m. were under the 

 German flag in- 1914, most of them 

 in East and South -West Africa 

 and in Cameroons. They had also 

 islands in the Pacific. The total 

 population of the million sq. m. was 

 under 15,000,000, and only an in- 

 finitesimal proportion of these were 

 settlers from Germany. Indeed, it 

 was proved that the Germans were 

 not at all inclined to colonise, in 

 spite of the frequent talk about 

 their need for room to expand. 

 They did not like the labours of 

 the pioneer, they did not like lone- 

 liness. They would settle in Brazil 

 because there they found German 

 settlements already in being. 

 Those who were induced to go to 

 the colonies, either by persuasion 

 or by the hope of growing rich 

 quickly, returned home as soon as 

 they could. In 1911, for example, 

 5,050 emigrants arrived in German 

 S.W. Africa, and 4,300 left. The 

 entire white population of all the 

 German acquisitions overseas was 

 only about 25,000, and a good 

 many of these were not Germans. 

 Those who were German belonged 

 mostly to the official class, to the 

 army and to the police, to the rail- 

 way staffs, and to the clergy. 

 Colonial Failure 



Nor did the colonies prove valu- 

 able, as had been hoped, in supply- 

 ing raw materials for the manu- 

 facturers of Germany. They were, 

 in short, a source of expense 

 rather than profit, and would no 

 doubt have been given up if the 

 government could have let them 

 go without thereby admitting that 

 its policy was ill-founded. This 

 would have meant abandoning the 

 strongest argument for the at- 

 tempt to build a great navy. 

 Their naval effort was justified by 

 the claim to a " place in the sun " 

 of world-empire, which they could 

 not secure, they declared, unless 

 they were prepared to dispute it 

 by force. 



CHARACTERISTICS. At all the 

 manoeuvres of their emperor, their 

 politicians, and their diplomatists, 

 the mass of Germans looked on 

 with a feeling of satisfaction, 



though few had any clear notion 

 as to what they were all about. 

 But everyone could perceive that 

 their leading men were becoming 

 more important and that these 

 political activities were good for 

 trade. So far as the mass of the 

 people were concerned little change 

 in the national character was to bo 

 noticed. They remained a simple- 

 living, home-loving folk, submit- 

 ing themselves readily to discipline 

 of every kind, enjoying their work, 

 putting all their energies into it, 

 enjoying their pleasures, and not 

 troubling themselves very much 

 about affairs of state, except when 

 they were told that England per- 

 sisted in standing in their way. 

 The government control of the 

 newspapers made it easily possible 

 to divert national emotion into any 

 desired channel ; the general 

 direction given to it was one of 

 hostility to Britain. 



Influence of Other Nations 



Yet, at the same time, the class 

 which carried on this campaign of 

 propaganda, and had its habits 

 entirely changed by the new pros- 

 perity, was ready to copy the 

 manners and customs of the 

 English aristocracy and rich middle 

 class with slavish flattery. The 

 practice of dining in the middle of 

 the day and taking a light supper 

 in the evening was abandoned. 

 Lunch, afternoon tea, and eight 

 o'clock dinner became fashion- 

 able. No man who cared about 

 his appearance wore any but 

 English clothes. For some time 

 there had been a disposition to 

 follow the British addiction to 

 outdbor games. Football had be- 

 come popular, lawn tennis was 

 played widely and well. The older 

 kind of German young man, who 

 wore his hair long and his clothes 

 anyhow, who tied a flowing tie 

 and did not mind his linen being 

 grubby, disappeared in all big cen- 

 tres of population ; his place was 

 taken by a well-set-up, square- 

 shouldered, clean, and neatly 

 dressed young man of the American 

 type. 



The girls changed, too, under the 

 influence of cycling and games; 

 they lost the humiliating subser- 

 vience to men which had been 

 drilled into their mothers. The 

 modern German wife would not 

 allow her husband to go into and 

 out of a room before her, as her 

 father did, without remonstrance 

 from his obedient and admiring 

 helpmeet ; nor would the modern 

 German husband feel comfortable 

 if his wife behaved on all occasions 

 as an inferior being. In these and 

 many other ways the Germans 

 threw off their old isolations and 

 provinciality, emerging into the 



stream of general European civili- 

 zation. They were the more 

 anxious and the more able to do 

 this, since their education always 

 included at least one foreign lan- 

 guage ; they were in a position, 

 therefore, to know what other 

 people were doing, to measure 

 themselves against French, Amer- 

 icans, British ; and to adopt what 

 pleased them in the civilization of 

 each. For the most part this pro- 

 cess of self-criticism and selection 

 had good results, though the say- 

 ing, " You (the British) will always 

 be fools, and we shall never be 

 gentlemen," showed that not all 

 Germans were blind to deep differ- 

 ences of national temperament. 

 Social Decline 



But in some directions the 

 mania for imitating led to very 

 ugly developments. For example, 

 Berlin attempted to take the place 

 of Paris as a pleasure-city. In a 

 very short time its aspect was com- 

 pletely altered. Its old simplicity, 

 its provincial character, gave place 

 to feverish pursuit of excitement. 

 Luxurious restaurants, night en- 

 tertainments of a hectic and vicious 

 kind, all the machinery for spend- 

 ing money foolishly and quickly, 

 came into existence. Ostentation 

 became the note of the new fashion- 

 able society, the moral tone of all 

 ranks dropped, crime became more 

 common, especially crimes of a de- 

 testable and even unnatural nature. 

 Many Germans believed that the 

 only remedy for the evils, the only 

 safeguard against national deca- 

 dence, was war. These were the 

 older families which proudly re- 

 called the triumphs of 1870-71 and 

 believed in the organization of 

 society upon a military basis. 



Sometimes the emperor, who, 

 owing to the simplicity of the Ger- 

 man mentality, exercised a great 

 deal of personal power, was swayed 

 by these Junker arguments and by 

 the desire of the militarist party 

 for war ; more often he dreamed 

 of himself being honoured by pos- 

 terity for his efforts as " the great 

 peace-emperor " to prevent war. 

 Lacking any stability of character, 

 he was a perpetual puzzle to his 

 subjects, as he was to the rest of the 

 world ; the affection they felt for 

 his office and person was tinged 

 with a good deal of quiet amuse- 

 ment at his vagaries and uncertain 

 course. The war drew out both the 

 strength and the weakness of the 

 German nature. All its old efferves- 

 cent enthusiasm bubbled up at the 

 outset. Even the emperor's ap- 

 peals to " our old German god," as 

 to a tribal fetish, stirred the great 

 mass of the people. All their old 

 tendency to be soon depressed was 

 noticeable as soon as it became 



