Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homicidal crime suffers the extreme penalty attaching to such crimes in America, and these figures, I admit, are a shocking revelation of supine justice and sentimental executive, as when politics can even bend our President to grant silly pardons, with baleful results upon the doings of other wealthy criminals. We use as large an amount of habit-forming drugs per capita as is used in the Chinese empire, so says Dr. Wright, who was commissioned by the State Department to gather facts on this subject. We import and consume 500,000 pounds of opium yearly, when 70,000 pounds, including its derivatives and preparations, should suffice for our medical needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000 ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured, and consumed, although 15,000 ounces would supply every legitimate need. America collected $340,000,000 from tariff taxes in 1911, and $40,000,000 of this from tobacco and alcoholics.
My readers may look back to the title of this chapter and ask: What has all this to do with the status of women in Germany? I have told you in these few pages the whole secret. The men are not independent; what can you expect of the women! The men have, until very lately, had no surplus wealth or leisure, and have now, to all appearance, little surplus vitality or energy. Germany is getting to be a very tired-looking nation. One hears almost as little laughter in Germany as in India. Gayety and laughter are the bubbles and foam on the glass of life, proving that it is charged with energy. Do not believe me, although I have carefully watched many thousands of Germans in all parts of Germany taking their pleasure and their ease; come over and see for yourself! These thousands at their simple recreations are not gay. I grant the dangers we run by the opposite policy, but these are the results we have to fear from the German methods.
It is the men who must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to spend, and more of luxury than is good for them; and all too many of the underbred among them paint and bejewel and begown themselves to imitate the lecherous barbarism of the too free. But one of the greatest ladies in Germany tells me, “I am never so flattered as when I am taken for an American!” I can pay her no handsomer compliment than to reply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our women revive the drooping dukedoms of England, and few will maintain that some of them at least are unsuited to the position. I have seen them in Germany as Frau Gräfin this or that, and not only their appearance but their house-keeping machinery, running noiselessly and accurately, proves that there is something more than dollars behind them.
One of the rare human beings whom I have known, who has at the same time the characteristics of the generous comrade, the good fellow, and the fine gentleman; who in moral courage in time of terrible strain, or in physical courage when one’s back is to the wall, never quailed, is an American woman; and thousands of my countrymen will say the same.
You cannot produce this type without freedom, without giving them opportunity, and taking the risks that are inherent in giving free scope to personal prowess. But they are not the women whom our blatant newspapers exploit, nor the women who buy the British aristocracy to launch them socially, nor the women who pervade the continental hotels and restaurants, nor the women whom as a rule the foreigner has the opportunity to meet. They are the women who have helped us to absorb the 21,000,000 aliens who have entered America since the Civil War; the women who stood behind us when we fought out that war for four years, leaving a million men on the fields of battle; the women who in the realm of housekeeping, to come down to practical levels, have revolutionized these duties and turned a drudgery into an art as have no other women in the world. The best answer the American can make to the luxurious lawlessness of some of our women, is to point to the house-keeping and home-making of his compatriots, not only at home but right here in Germany. Fifty years ago it could not have been said, but to-day there is no doubt in my mind that American house-keeping is the best in the world. In comfort, in the smooth running of the household machinery, in good food and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class by ourselves in matters of housewifery.
The English attitude of women toward men is somewhat that of comradeship, and once married the man’s comfort is looked after with some care; the American attitude of women toward men, in the more luxurious circles, is often, I admit, that of a spoiled child toward a gift-bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship her along the lines of a restricted rubric; but in Germany the subordination, the unquestioning and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance of inferiority have not only softened the men but robbed the women of even sufficient independence to make them the helpmates that they try to be. There have been women of social and even political influence: Bettina von Arnim, Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel Varnhagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems to have been a soothing adjunct of the Foreign Office. It is rather as admirers than as executives that they shine. Their attitude toward the great Goethe, and his nonchalant polygamy toward them, is difficult for us to understand and approve.
“The gentle Henrietta then,
And a third Mary next did reign,
And Joan and Jane and Andria;
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Katherine,
And then a long et cetera.”
No real man is a misogynist, for not to like women is not to be a man. There are, however, many men, both in Germany and out of it, who greatly dislike sham women; that is, women who shirk their functional responsibilities. This form of dislike is a healthy instinct. Women are given the greatest and most inspiring of all tasks: to make men; and a woman who cannot make a man, by giving birth to one, or by developing one as son or husband, has failed more deplorably even than a man who cannot make a living. This task of theirs constitutes a superiority impossible to deny or to overcome. A woman, therefore, who craves man’s activities and standards is as foolish as though a wheat-field should long to be a bakery. Most healthy-minded men hold this view, though some of us may think that German men overemphasize it.
The coarse sentimentality of the lower classes has been noted, but it is not confined to them. The premarital relations of all but the most cultured and experienced, are marked by a mawkish sweetness which is all the more noticeable in contrast with the dull routine of saving and slaving which follows. She begins by being photographed sitting in her hero’s lap, and ends by sitting on the less comfortable chair to darn his socks and to tend his babies. There are women enthroned, and who deserve to be, in Germany as in other countries; but taken in the mass, speaking in hundreds of thousands, it is not an inaccurate picture to say that the women are not taken seriously in Germany except as mothers and servants.
The census of 1910 shows that there are 32,040,166 men in Germany and 32,885,827 women, or 845,661 more women than men. The number of men in proportion to the number of women is steadily increasing in Germany, showing that the habits of the men are more and more feminine, that the state provides for them and protects them, and that the women take good care of them.