"It was made for people who look at sculpture from that point of view," said my friend.
I hardly know where an artist finds inspiration in the streets of Berlin. It really makes the impression of a city that has sprung up in a night, and that is kept clean by invisible forces. The great breadth of the streets, the avenues of trees everywhere, and the many open places make it pleasant; but you look in vain for the narrow lanes and gabled houses still to be found in other German towns, and you are not surprised when Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is so new and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern German spirit, and what it has of old tradition and old social life lies beneath the surface, hidden from the eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure, and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurfürst. There is the double line of princes on either side of the Sieges-Allee. But modern Berlin dates from 1870, and so do all good Berliners, whatever their age may be. They are proud of their young empire and of their big city, and of doing everything in the best possible way. There is unceasing flux and growth in Berlin, so that descriptions written a few years ago are as out of date as these impressions must be soon. For instance, I had counted steadfastly on finding three things there that I cannot find at home: first and second-class cabs, hordes of soldiers everywhere, and policemen who would run a sword through you if you looked at them; and of all these I was more or less disappointed.
I did get hold of a second-class cab on my arrival in Berlin, but it nearly came to pieces on the way, and I never saw another during my stay there. The cabs are all provided with the taximeter now, so that the fare knows to a fraction what is due to the driver; and the drivers are of the first class, and wear white hats. Anyone who wished to see a second-class cab would have to make inquiries, and find a stand where some still languish, but before long the last of them will probably be preserved in a museum. Cabs are not much used in Berlin, because communication by the electric cars is so well organised. The whole population travels by them, the whole city is possessed by them. If it is to convey a true impression, a description of Berlin should run to the moan of them as they glide everlastingly to and fro. You can hardly escape their noise, and not for long their sight. Even the Tiergarten, the Hyde Park of Berlin, is traversed by them, which is as it should be in a municipal republic. This is what the Germans call their city, for they are not conscious themselves of living under an autocracy or of being in any sense of the word less free than, let us say, the English, a point of view most puzzling to an English person, who is conscious from the moment he crosses the German frontier of being governed for his good. But it is pleasant on a summer morning to be carried through the shady avenues of the Tiergarten in an open car, whether it is an autocracy or a republic that arranges it for you; and you reflect that in this and a thousand other ways Germany is an agreeable country even if it is not a free one; especially for "the people" who have small means, and are able to drive through the chief pleasure ground of their city for a penny. The conductors of the cars are obliged to announce the name of the next halting-place, so that passengers alighting may get up in time and step off directly, but on no account before the car stops. Nothing is left to chance or muddle in Berlin, and unless you are a born fool you cannot go astray. If you are a born fool you ask a policeman, as you would at home, and find another dear illusion shattered. He does not draw his sword, he is neither gruff nor disobliging. He greets you with the military salute, and calls you gracious lady. Then he answers your question if he can. If not he gets out the little guide book he carries, and patiently hunts up the street or the building you want. He is usually a good-natured rosy faced young man with a fair moustache, and he will do anything in the world for you except control the traffic. That with the best will in the world he cannot do. So he stands in the midst of it and smiles. Sometimes he sits amidst it on a horse and looks solemn. But he never impresses himself on it. There is a story of a policeman who went to London to learn from our men what to do, and who bemoaned his fate when he got back. "I hold up my hand in just the same way," he said, "and then the people run and the horses run, and there's a smash and I get put in prison." The Berliners themselves say that they are not accustomed yet, as we have been for years, to regard the police as their well-liked and trusted servants, and to obey their directions willingly. However this may be, there is at present only one safe way of getting to the opposite side of a busy street in Berlin, and that is to wait till a crowd gathers and charges across it in a bunch like a swarm of bees.
Berlin is never asleep, and it is as light by night as by day. It is much pleasanter for a woman without escort to come out of the theatre there than in London. She will find crowds of respectable people with her, and they will not depart in their own cabs and carriages. They will crowd into the electric cars, and she must know which car she wants and crowd with them. The worst that can happen to her will be to find her car over-crowded, and in that case she must not expect a man to give her his seat. I have seen a young German lady make an old lady take her place, but I have never known men yield their seats to women. You do not see as many private carriages in Berlin in a week as you do in some parts of London in an hour. Even in front of the Opera House very few will be in waiting; and there is no fashionable hour for riding and driving in the Tiergarten. I know too little about horses to judge of those that were being ridden, or driven in private carriages; but the miserable beasts in cabs and carts force the most ignorant person to observe and pity them. They look as if they were on their way to the knacker's yard, and very often as if they must sink beneath the load they are compelled to carry. It is comforting to reflect that horses will doubtless soon be too old-fashioned for Berlin, and that all the cabs and vans of the future will be motors. The cars run early enough in the morning for the workmen, and late enough at night for people who have had supper at a popular restaurant after the theatre or a glass of beer at one of the Zelten, the garden restaurants that in the time of Frederick the Great were really tents, and where the Berliners flocked then as they do now to hear a band, look at the trees of the Tiergarten, and enjoy light refreshments. When you get back to your house from such gaieties you find it locked and in darkness, but though there is a "portier" you do not disturb him by calling out your name as you would in Paris. In modern houses there is electric light outside each floor that you switch on for yourself, and you have a race with it that you lose unless you are active; but you soon learn to feel your way up to the next light when you are left in darkness. The Berlin "portier" is not as much in evidence as the Paris concierge. He opens the door to strangers, but if you stay or live in the house you are expected to carry two heavy keys about with you, one for the street door and one for the flat. The modern doors have some machinery by which they shut themselves noiselessly after you. You hear a great deal more said about "nerves" in Germany than in England, and yet Germans seem to be amazingly indifferent to noise. They will not tolerate the brass bands and barrel-organs that pester us, but that is because they are fond of music. Screaming voices, banging doors, and the clatter of kitchens and business premises seem not to trouble them at all. Most houses in Berlin are five or six storeys high, and are built round the four sides of a small paved court. No one who has not lived in such a house, and in a room giving on the court, can understand how every sound increases and reverberates. Footsteps at dawn sound as if the seven-leagued boots had come, and were shod with iron. You whisper that the kitchen on a lower floor in an opposite corner looks well kept, and the maid hears what you say and looks at you smiling. I knew that the back premises of these big German hives might harbour any social grade and almost any industry, and for a long time I vowed that some one must live in our court whose business it was to hammer tin, and that he hammered it most late at night and early in the morning. I had not heard anything like the noise since I had lived in a high narrow German street paved with cobble-stones, and occupied just opposite my windows by a brewer whose vans returned to him at daybreak and tumbled empty casks at his door. But I never discovered my tin merchant in Berlin, and in time I had to admit that my hosts were right. The noise I complained of was made by the cook washing up in the opposite kitchen. I should not have noticed it if I had been a sensible person, and slept with my curtains drawn and my double windows tight shut.
Of course, there are some quiet streets in Berlin, and there are charming homes in the "garden-houses." Some of the quadrangles are built round a garden instead of a paved yard, and then you can get a quiet pleasant flat with a balcony that looks on a garden instead of a street. The traditional plan of a Berlin flat is most inconvenient and unpractical. In old-fashioned houses, and even in houses built sixteen years ago or less, you find that one of the chief rooms is the only thoroughfare between the bedrooms near the kitchen premises and the rooms near the front door. Anyone occupying one of these back rooms, which are often good ones, can only get to the front door by way of this thoroughfare, where he will usually find the family gathered together; the maid, too, must pass through every time the door bell rings, and when she goes about her business in the front regions her brooms and pails must pass through with her. The window of this room, which is known as a Berliner Zimmer, is always in one corner and lights it insufficiently. The Berliners themselves recognise its disadvantages, but I like to describe it, because I observe amongst the Germans of to-day a fierce determination to destroy and deny everything a foreigner might call a little absurd, even if it is characteristic; so I feel sure that if I go to Berlin a few years hence there will not be a Berliner Zimmer left in the city, and no Berliner will ever have seen or heard of one; nor will the flat doors have the quaint little peepholes through which the maid's eye may be seen appraising you before she lets you in. The newest houses, those in the Kurfürstendamm, for instance, have every "improvement"—central heating, lifts, gas cooking stoves, sinks for washing up, and bathrooms that are a reality and not a mere appearance. These bathrooms, I am assured, can be used without several hours' notice and the anxious superintendence of the only person, the head of the family as a rule, who understands the heating apparatus. Berlin, like Mr. Barrie's Admirable Crichton, has found out how to lay on hot and cold. It has found out about electric light too, and it might teach London how to use the telephone. Berlin talks to its friends by telephone as a matter of course, asks them how they are, if they enjoyed the Fest last night, whether if you call on Tuesday they will be at home. Perhaps when Mr. Wells goes to Berlin he will forsee a reaction, a revolt against the incessant insistent bell that respects no occupation and allows no undisturbed rest. It is a hurried generation that uses the telephone so much, for the letter boxes are emptied eighteen times in twenty-four hours, and if the post is not quick enough or a telegram too expensive for all you want to say you can send a card by the tube post.
Berlin is not the city of soldiers that the English fancy pictures it. English people, English little boys, for instance, who would like to see all their lead soldiers come to life, must go to one of the smaller garrison towns, where in every street and every square they will watch men on the march and at drill. In those quarters of Berlin not occupied by barracks the population is civilian. You see the grey and the dark blue uniforms everywhere, but not in masses and not at work. The people rush like children to follow the guard changed at the Schloss every day; just as they might in London, where soldiers are a rare spectacle. In a smaller town the army is more evidently in possession. It fills the restaurants, occupies the front row of the stalls at the opera, prevails in public gardens, and holds the pavement against the world. But Berlin to all appearances belongs to its citizens, and provides for their profit and convenience. They fill its multitude of houses. They say they make its laws and order its progress. At any rate they live in an agreeable, well-managed city, full of air and light, and kept so clean that most other cities seem slovenly and grimy by comparison. To go suddenly from Berlin to Hamburg, for instance, gives you a shock; though Hamburg is incomparably more attractive and delightful. But in Hamburg you may see bits of paper lying about, and dust on the pavement. In Berlin there is no dust, and no one has ever seen an untidy bit of paper there. It is to be hoped that no one ever travels direct from Berlin to London. What would he think of Covent Garden Market? There are markets in Berlin, at least a dozen of them, but by midday they are swept and garnished. You would not find a leaf of parsley or an end of string to tell you where one had been.