They have been swathed in “Forbidden” so long that their taste for daring was late in coming. Our colonies, small wars, punitive expeditions, and control over neighboring territories are not planned for far ahead; but the exigencies of the situations are met by the remedies and solutions of men fitted by their training in school, in sport, in social and political life for just such work, and who are the more efficient the more they do of it. We are inclined to do things, and to think them out the day after; while the German thinks them out the week before, and then sometimes hesitates to do them at all.
The German goes more slowly, perhaps more successfully, in commercial and industrial undertakings, but always with a chart in front of him, a pair of spectacles on his nose, and with no desire to take chances.
In the rough-and-tumble world, the American and the Englishman went ahead the faster; in a more orderly world, and commerce, industry, and war are all far more scientific or orderly than of yore, the German has come into his own and goes ahead very fast. He has not made friends and supporters as have the other two: first, because he is a new-comer; and also, I believe, because human nature, even when it is not adventurous itself, loves adventure, and has a liking for the man who is a law unto himself. Indeed, the Germans themselves have a sneaking fondness for such a one. At any rate there is far more imitation of American and English ways in Germany, than of German manners, customs, and methods in America or in England.
“Experiment is not sufficient,” writes Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus; “experience must verify what can be accepted or not accepted; knowledge is experience.” For the moment, but it is probably not for long, we have the advantage in the knowledge bred of experience.
The German comes from the forest, loves the forest. “Kein Yolk ist so innig mit seinem Wald erwachsen wie das Deutsche, keines liebt den Wald so sehr.” (“No nation has grown up so at one with its forests as have the Germans; no other nation loves its forests as do they.”) He walks, and meditates, and sings in the forest, and nowadays goes to the forest with his skis, his snow-shoes, and his sled. Our great games are, many of them, personal conflicts, and attended by some personal risk, and demanding both discipline in preparing for them and severe discipline in the playing. Our love of the aleatory, of betting our belongings, our powers, our persons even, against life, is not commonly alive in Germany. The Germans are only just emerging into safety and confidence in themselves, and beginning cautiously to agree with us that
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.”
From these sombre forests came a race who still find it lonely to be alone, and they herd together still for safety as of old, and have no love of physical speculation. They are daring in thought and theory, but cautious in physical and personal matters. An office stool followed by a pension contents all too many men in Germany.
“Reden, Handeln, Tun und Wandeln
Zeigt der Menschen Wesen nicht.
Was im Herzen sie im Stillen
Fest verschliessen, stumm verhüllen,
Ist ihr richtigs Angesicht.”
An overwhelming majority of Germans believe that this is man’s real portrait; an overwhelming majority of Americans would not even understand it.
The German army is the antidote to this lack of physical discipline, this lack of strenuous physical life. The army takes the place of our West, of our games, of our sports; just as it takes the place of England’s colonies and public schools and games and sports. When looked at in this way, when its double duty is recognized, the enormous cost of it is not so material. The expense of the German army is not greater than our armies, plus what we spend for games and sport and colonial adventure.