THE GERMAN NATION 



287 



hauers to those of the present. And so it 

 is. The German Krupps have armed the 

 nations ; the German Balhns have fur- 

 nished ship bottoms for the world ; the 

 German Guinners have made their influ- 

 ence felt wherever financiers gather; the 

 German Borsigs have built the locomo- 

 tives the sound of whose whistles have 

 echoed over the graves of Israel and Ish- 

 mael ; the German electrical machinery 

 has harnessed the rivers of Asia, Africa 

 and South America. 



As for battleships, the Kaiser long ago 

 announced his humiliation at not having 

 what he thought an adequate navy. In a 

 speech at Bremen in 1903 he said that in 

 his boyhood he had been angered and 

 chagrined at the pitiful weakness of the 

 German navy. He announced that while 

 it was not his intention to have a navy 

 for aggression, he wanted one that would 

 command the respect of the world. "T 

 want to do everything possible to let bay- 

 onets and cannon rest ; but at the same 

 time to keep our bayonets sharp and can- 

 non ready, so that envy and grief shall 

 not disturb us in tending our garden or 

 building our beautiful house." 



Six years before, the Kaiser had made 

 another speech in which he declared : 

 "Neptune with the Trident is the symbol 

 for Us that we now have new tasks to 

 fulfill, since the Empire has been welded 

 together. Everywhere there are German 

 citizens to protect, everywhere German 

 honor to maintain : That Trident must be 

 in our fist." 



BEGINNING THE GERMAN NAVY 



The present German navy, second only 

 to that of Great Britain, dates from the 

 Jameson Raid, in South Africa. President 

 Kruger sent the Kaiser a telegram after 

 that incident, who responded with a mes- 

 sage of sympathy that was taken by Great 

 Britain as a sort of threat. She made 

 ready for eventualities, and in 1900 Ger- 

 many responded with a naval bill whose 

 preamble laid it down as Germany's in- 

 tention to build a fleet of such strength 

 that "a war with the mightiest naval 

 power would involve risks threatening 

 the supremacy of that power." That pre- 

 amble served as notice to England that 

 her position as mistress of the seas was 



to be questioned after that date, and the 

 greatest armament-building race of the 

 ages was on. 



No stone has been left unturned to 

 make the German navy powerful and 

 efficient, especially in defense. The Ger- 

 mans have evolved a collapsible periscope 

 for their submarines, something, it is 

 stated, no other navy possesses. They 

 have designed their Zeppelins for co-op- 

 eration with their dreadnoughts, arming 

 them with heavy-caliber, rapid-fire guns, 

 both above and below the gasbags, mount- 

 ed so that they can cover every possible 

 means of approach — fore, aft, broadside, 

 from above, or below. The cruising ra- 

 dius of the Zeppelins is said to be 2,400 

 miles, and their operating height 12,000 

 feet, which is beyond the range of any 

 surface guns. 



GERMAN EIVING CONDITIONS 



The people of German cities live amid 

 dififerent conditions than those of Ameri- 

 can cities. In Berlin it is forbidden to 

 water flowers except between the hours 

 of 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning ; no one 

 can play a piano before 7 in the morning 

 or after 9 at night ; no bedding may be 

 aired out of a front window ; singing, 

 shouting or whistling is not tolerated on 

 the streets ; the dwellers in apartment- 

 houses are forbidden to bathe at night ; 

 no one is allowed to take a street car that 

 is full to its seating capacity; no pedes- 

 trian shall obstruct a carriage or an auto- 

 mobile ; one cannot employ a servant 

 without the aid of the police, or change 

 his residence without their consent ; he 

 cannot take the cab that strikes his fancy, 

 but the one the police tell him to take. 

 There are walks sacred to pedestrians, 

 streets dedicated to roller skaters, speed- 

 ways where only automobiles may go. 



NATIVES WEEE SATISFIED 



Although the long list of "forbidden" 

 things in German cities gets onto the 

 nerves of Americans, the Germans like 

 them. They say that only unreasonable 

 things are forbidden and that all such 

 things should not be allowed — their 

 clothes will not be made wet by the water 

 from upstairs window boxes ; their morn- 

 ing nap will not be disturbed by street 



