I had one advantage; nobody suspected me of paying anything for my place; and, then, I had come from Washington, the capital of the country.
As I said, my eyes were fixed on Russia. I found, however, that the main business of my colleagues seemed to be to watch Germany, and that attitude for a time left me cold. Denmark had reason to fear Germany; but then, at that time, every other European nation was on its guard against possible aggressions on the part of its neighbours. I had hope that a Scandinavian Confederacy or the swelling rise of the Social Democracy in Germany would put an end to the fears of all the little countries. There seemed to be no hope that the attitude of the German nation towards the world could change unless the Social Democrats and the Moderate Liberals should gain power.
But why should we watch Germany, the powerful, the self-satisfied, the splendid country whose Kaiser professed the greatest devotion to our President, and had sent his brother, Prince Henry, over to show his regard for our nation? I was most anxious to find the reason.
In my time, good Americans—say in 1880—when they died, went to Paris, never to Berlin. The Emperor of Germany had determined to change this. He tried to make his capital a glittering imitation of Paris; he received Americans with every show of cordiality.
Berlin was to be made a paradise for Americans and for the world; but nearly every American is half French at heart. Nevertheless, I do not think that we took the French attitude of revenge against Germany seriously; we thought that the French were beginning to forget the revanche; their Government had apparently become so 'international.' Many of us had been brought up with the Germans and the sons of Germans. We read German literature; we began with Grimm and went on to Goethe and, to descend somewhat, Heyse and Auerbach. Without asking too many questions, we even accepted Frederick the Great as a hero. He was easier to swallow than Cromwell, and more amusing.
In fact, most of us did not think much of foreign complications, the charm of the Deutscher Club in Milwaukee, the warmth of the singing of German lieder by returned students from Freiburg or Bonn or Heidelberg; the lavish hospitality of the opulent German in this country, the German love for family life, and, for me personally, the survival of the robust virtues, seemingly of German origin, among the descendants of the Germans in Pennsylvania, impressed me.
As far as education was concerned, I had hated to see the German methods and ideas servilely applied. I belonged to the Alliance Française and preferred the French system as more efficient in the training of the mind than the German. Besides, the importation of the German basis for the doctorate of philosophy into our universities seemed to me to be dangerous. It led young men to waste time, since there was no governmental stamp on their work and no concrete recognition of the results of their studies as there was in Germany; and, this being so, it meant that the dignified degree, from the old-fashioned point of view, would become degraded, or, at its best, merely a degree for the decoration of teachers. It would be sought for only as a means of earning a living, not as a preparation for research.
'Of course I know Spain,' said a flippant attaché in Copenhagen. 'I have seen Carmen, eaten olla podrida, and adored the Russian ballet in the cachuca!' None of my friends who thought they knew Germany was as bad as this. Some of the professors of my acquaintance, who had seen only one side of German life, loved the Fatherland for its support to civilisation. Nous avons changé—tout cela!
Other gentlemen, who had started out to love Germany, hated everything German because they had been compelled to stand up in an exclusive club when anybody of superior rank entered its sacred precincts or when something of the kind happened. The man with whom I had read Heine and worked out jokes in Kladdertasch was devoted to everything German because he had once lived in a small German town where there was good opera! Personally, I had hated Bismarck and all his works and pomps for several reasons:—one was because of Busch's glorifying book about him; another for the Kulturkampf; another for his attitude toward Hanover, and because one of my closest German friends was a Hanoverian.
Brought up, as most Philadelphians of my generation were, in admiration for Karl Schurz and the men of '48, I could not tolerate anything that was Prussian or Bismarckian; but, as Windthorst, the creator of the Centrum party in the Reichstag, was one of my heroes, I counted myself as the admirer of the best in Germany.