XI CONCLUSION
Criticism is temptingly easy when it consists, as it so often does, in merely noting what is different, or what is not there. Helpful criticism I take to be the discovery of what is there, and its revelation, with an examination of its history, its truth, and its value. That kind of criticism is close to creation itself, and few there are sufficiently self-sacrificing to endow and to train themselves to undertake it.
It makes life very complicated to think too much about it, but to take a step further, and to attempt to apply logic to life, that way madness lies. It is of the very essence of life that things are never as they ought to be, but only as they can be for the time being. We may be optimistic enough to believe that this is a good world, but it is none the less true that unbending virtue seldom receives the temporal rewards for which most of us are striving, and with which alone most of us are content. We are forced to doubt, therefore, the goodness which finds life easy and comfortable, and since we must still at all hazards be charitable in our judgments of one another, we become, most of us, opportunists in morals.
In dealing with the men, manners, affairs, and the soul of a stranger people, therefore, one must use what experience, knowledge, good-humor, and impartiality one has, without assumption of superiority, without making high demands, and without ceasing to be at least as opportunist as we are at home. Because things are different, they are not necessarily better or worse, and if certain things are not there, it is perhaps because they do not belong there. Above all, we should refrain from applying a stern logic to the life of another country which we never use in measuring our own.
The whole north of Germany is a flat, barren plain, with the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser flowing west and north. The north of Germany on a raised map looks like a vast sea-shore, and so it is. To the south a great river, the Rhine, pierces its way from Frankfort through a beautiful gorge in the mountains, and has its source near that of the Danube. Barbarossa called this river, “that royal street.” This sea-shore is cultivated and populous; this river has been made a great commercial highway. Cologne, one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, is now a seaport; Strasburg, three hundred miles inland, can receive boats of six hundred tons; and the tributary river, the Main, has been deepened so that now Frankfort receives steamers from the Rhine. Three quarters of the through trade of Holland is German water-borne trade. Now the Dortmund-Ems canal, which is one hundred and sixty-eight miles long, and can be used by ships of a thousand tons, gives an outlet, via the Rhine, at Emden. All this is the work of a patient, persistent, and economical people working under great natural disadvantages.
As compared with America this is an unfruitful land, and, as I have noted, surrounded on all sides by powerful enemies. In 1902 Traugott Müller estimated the value of Germany’s production of wheat, potatoes, vegetables-the products of the gardens and the fields, in short-at $605,000,000; the production of beef, mutton, pork at $669,500,000; of the dairies at $406,000,000; of cotton, sugar, alcohol, wine, and wood at $322,000,000; or a total of $2,002,000,000. The United States is seventeen times as large, but by no means seventeen times as productive.
Germany, again, is divided into a number of states, all, with the exception of Prussia, with its population of 40,000,000 out of the total of 65,000,000, comparatively small. These states are not merely divided by legal and geographical lines, but by traditions, different ruling families, religion, tastes, habits, and manners, and even geologically. Bernhard Cotta, writing of Germany, says: “Geologically there is a Spain, an England, a Sweden, a Russia, a France, but no Germany.” They are different individuals, not different members of the same family. They have been cemented together by coercion.
Over this whole country for three hundred years have swept all the fighting men of Europe. Until 1870 it was a tournament ground for the Swedes, Russians, French, Dutch, Belgians, Italians, Hungarians, English, and the various German states. It was shot over, till it is a wonder that there are any young birds, not to speak of old cocks and hens left, to begin with over again.
A feature of the political situation, which scarcely enters into political calculations in America, is the sharp division between Protestants and Catholics, with a political party of Catholics numbering one fourth of the total members, in the Reichstag. In 1905 there were 37,646,852 Protestants and 22,109,644 Catholics in Germany, the Roman Catholics being in a majority in Baden, Bavaria, and Alsace-Lorraine. In the past these religious differences have entailed all the most repulsive features of war, waged to the point of extermination. “Lieber Rom als Liberal,” is still a punning war-cry marking the dislike of Rome and the fear of Socialism.
With us religion has become largely an organized attempt, using charity as patronage, to reconcile piety and plenty, with the result that with the exception of the Catholic Church dealing with the lately arrived immigrants, and the Methodists and Baptists dealing with the ignorant masses, black and white, in the South, religion in the sense of an organized church has little hold upon the people, especially in the large cities.