* * * * *
The train which I boarded at Lucerne was a through express from Milan to Frankfort with special cars for Paris and Berlin. It was crowded with Germans of a ruddy, solid variety, radiating health, warmth, assurance, defiance. I never saw a more marked contrast than existed between these travelers on the train and the local Swiss outside. The latter seemed much paler and less forceful by contrast, though not less intellectual and certainly more refined.
One stout, German lady, with something like eighteen packages, had made a veritable express room of her second-class compartment. The average traveler, entitled to a seat beside her, would take one look at her defenses and pass on. She was barricaded beyond any hope of successful attack.
I watched interestedly to see how the character of the people, soil and climate would change as we crossed the frontier into Germany. Every other country I had entered had presented a great contrast to the last. After passing fifteen or twenty Swiss towns and small cities, perhaps more, we finally reached Basle and there the crew was changed. I did not know it, being busy thinking of other things, until an immense, rotund, guttural-voiced conductor appeared at the door and wanted to know if I was bound for Frankfort. I looked out. It was just as I expected: another world and another atmosphere had been substituted for that of Switzerland. Already the cars and depot platforms were different, heavier I thought, more pretentious. Heavy German porters (packträger) were in evidence. The cars, the vast majority of them here, bore the label of Imperial Germany—the wide-winged, black eagle with the crown above it, painted against a pinkish-white background, with the inscription “Kaiserlicher Deutsche Post.” A station-master, erect as a soldier, very large, with splendiferous parted whiskers, arrayed in a blue uniform and cap, regulated the departure of trains. The “Uscita” and “Entrata” of Italy here became “Eingang” and “Ausgang,” and the “Bagaglia” of every Italian station was here “Gepäck.” The endless German “Verboten,” and “Es ist untersagt” also came into evidence. We rolled out into a wide, open, flat, mountainless plain with only the thin poplars of France in evidence and no waterways of any kind, and then I knew that Switzerland was truly no more.
If you want to see how the lesser Teutonic countries vary from this greater one, the dominant German Empire, pass this way from Switzerland into Germany, or from Germany into Holland. At Basle, as I have said, we left the mountains for once and for all. I saw but few frozen peaks after Lucerne. As we approached Basle they seemed to grow less and less and beyond that we entered a flat plain, as flat as Kansas and as arable as the Mississippi Valley, which stretched unbroken from Basle to Frankfort and from Frankfort to Berlin. Judging from what I saw the major part of Germany is a vast prairie, as flat as a pancake and as thickly strewn with orderly, new, bright forceful towns as England is with quaint ones.
However, now that I was here, I observed that it was just these qualities which make Germany powerful and the others weak. Such thoroughness, such force, such universal superintendence! Truly it is amazing. Once you are across the border, if you are at all sensitive to national or individual personalities you can feel it, vital, glowing, entirely superior and more ominous than that of Switzerland, or Italy, and often less pleasant. It is very much like the heat and glow of a furnace. Germany is a great forge or workshop. It resounds with the industry of a busy nation; it has all the daring and assurance of a successful man; it struts, commands, defies, asserts itself at every turn. You would not want to witness greater variety of character than you could by passing from England through France into Germany. After the stolidity and civility of the English, and the lightness and spirit of France, the blazing force and defiance of the Germans comes upon you as almost the most amazing of all.
In spite of the fact that my father was German and that I have known more or less of Germans all my life, I cannot say that I admired the personnel of the German Empire, the little that I saw of it, half so much as I admired some of the things they had apparently achieved. All the stations that I saw in Germany were in apple-pie order, new, bright, well-ordered. Big blue-lettered signs indicated just the things you wanted to know. The station platforms were exceedingly well built of red tile and white stone; the tracks looked as though they were laid on solid hardwood ties; the train ran as smoothly as if there were no flaws in it anywhere and it ran swiftly. I had to smile as occasionally on a platform—the train speeding swiftly—a straight, upstanding German officer or official, his uniform looking like new, his boots polished, his gold epaulets and buckles shining as brightly as gold can shine, his blond whiskers, red cap, glistening glasses or bright monocle, and above all his sharp, clear eyes looking directly at you, making an almost amazing combination of energy, vitality and superiority, came into view and disappeared again. It gave you a startling impression of the whole of Germany. “Are they all like that?” I asked myself. “Is the army really so dashing and forceful?”
As I traveled first to Frankfort, then to Mayence, Coblenz and Cologne and again from Cologne to Frankfort and Berlin, and thence out of the country via Holland, the wonder grew. I should say now that if Germany has any number of defects of temperament, and it truly has from almost any American point of view, it has virtues and capacities so noteworthy, admirable and advantageous that the whole world may well sit up and take notice. The one thing that came home to me with great force was that Germany is in no way loose jointed or idle but, on the contrary, strong, red-blooded, avid, imaginative. Germany is a terrific nation, hopeful, courageous, enthusiastic, orderly, self-disciplining, at present anyhow, and if it can keep its pace without engaging in some vast, self-destroying conflict, it can become internally so powerful that it will almost stand irresistible. I should say that any nation that to-day chose to pick a quarrel with Germany on her home ground would be foolish in the extreme. It is the beau ideal of the aggressive, militant, orderly spirit and, if it were properly captained and the gods were kind, it would be everywhere invincible.
* * * * *
When I entered Germany it was with just two definite things in mind. One was to seek out my father’s birthplace, a little hamlet, as I understood it, called Mayen, located somewhere between the Moselle and the Rhine at Coblenz,—the region where the Moselle wines come from. The other was to visit Berlin and see what Germany’s foremost city was really like and to get a look at the Kaiser if possible. In both of these I was quickly successful, though after I reached Frankfort some other things transpired which were not on the program.