The Germans are amazingly like the Americans. Sometimes I think that we get the better portion of our progressive, constructive characteristics from them. Only, the Germans, I am convinced, are so much more thorough. They go us one better in economy, energy, endurance, and thoroughness. The American already is beginning to want to play too much. The Germans have not reached that stage.
The railway stations I found were excellent, with great switching-yards and enormous sheds arched with glass and steel, where the trains waited. In Berlin I admired the suburban train service as much as I did that of London, if not more. That in Paris was atrocious. Here the trains offered a choice of first, second, and third class, with the vast majority using the second and third. I saw little difference in the crowds occupying either class. The second-class compartments were upholstered in a greyish-brown corduroy. The third-class seats were of plain wood, varnished and scrupulously clean. I tried all three classes and finally fixed on the third as good enough for me.
I wish all Americans who at present suffer the indignities of the American street-railway and steam-railway suburban service could go to Berlin and see what that city has to teach them in this respect. Berlin is much larger than Chicago. It is certain soon to be a city of five or six millions of people—very soon. The plans for handling this mass of people comfortably and courteously are already in operation. The German public service is obviously not left to supposedly kindly minded business gentlemen—“Christian gentlemen,”—as Mr. Baer of the Reading once chose to put it, “in partnership with God.” The populace may be underlings to an imperial Kaiser, subject to conscription and eternal inspection, but at least the money-making “Christian gentlemen” with their hearts and souls centered on their private purses and working, as Mr. Croker once said of himself, “for their own pockets all the time,” are not allowed to “take it out of” the rank and file.
No doubt the German street-railways and steam-railways are making a reasonable sum of money and are eager to make more. I haven’t the least doubt but that heavy, self-opinionated, vainglorious German directors of great wealth gather around mahogany tables in chambers devoted to meetings of directors and listen to ways and means of cutting down expenses and “improving” the service. Beyond the shadow of a doubt there are hard, hired managers, eager to win the confidence and support of their superiors and ready to feather their own nests at the expense of the masses, who would gladly cut down the service, “pack ’em in,” introduce the “cutting out” system of car service and see that the “car ahead” idea was worked to the last maddening extreme; but in Germany, for some strange, amazing reason, they don’t get a chance. What is the matter with Germany, anyhow? I should like to know. Really I would. Why isn’t the “Christian gentleman” theory of business introduced there? The population of Germany, acre for acre and mile for mile, is much larger than that of America. They have sixty-five million people crowded into an area as big as Texas. Why don’t they “pack ’em in”? Why don’t they introduce the American “sardine” subway service? You don’t find it anywhere in Germany, for some strange reason. Why? They have a subway service in Berlin. It serves vast masses of people, just as the subway does in New York; its platforms are crowded with people. But you can get a seat just the same. There is no vociferated “step lively” there. Overcrowding isn’t a joke over there as it is here—something to be endured with a feeble smile until you are spiritually comparable to a door mat. There must be “Christian gentlemen” of wealth and refinement in Germany and Berlin. Why don’t they “get on the job”? The thought arouses strange uncertain feelings in me.
Take, for instance, the simple matter of starting and stopping street-railway cars in the Berlin business heart. In so far as I could see, that area, mornings and evenings, was as crowded as any similar area in Paris, London, or New York. Street-cars have to be run through it, started, stopped; passengers let on and off—a vast tide carried in and out of the city. Now the way this matter is worked in New York is quite ingenious. We operate what might be described as a daily guessing contest intended to develop the wits, muscles, lungs, and tempers of the people. The scheme, in so far as the street railway companies are concerned, is (after running the roads as economically as possible) to see how thoroughly the people can be fooled in their efforts to discover when and where a car will stop. In Berlin, however, they have, for some reason, an entirely different idea. There the idea is not to fool the people at all but to get them in and out of the city as quickly as possible. So, as in Paris, London, Rome, and elsewhere, a plan of fixed stopping-places has been arranged. Signs actually indicate where the cars stop and there—marvel of marvels—they all stop even in the so-called rush hours. No traffic policeman, apparently, can order them to go ahead without stopping. They must stop. And so the people do not run for the cars, the motorman has no joy in outwitting anybody. Perhaps that is why the Germans are neither so agile, quick-witted, or subtle as the Americans.
And then, take in addition—if you will bear with me another moment—this matter of the Berlin suburban service as illustrated by the lines to Potsdam and elsewhere. It is true the officers, and even the Emperor of Germany, living at Potsdam and serving the Imperial German Government there may occasionally use this line, but thousands upon thousands of intermediate and plebeian Germans use it also. You can always get a seat. Please notice this word always. There are three classes and you can always get a seat in any class—not the first or second classes only, but the third class and particularly the third class. There are “rush” hours in Berlin just as there are in New York, dear reader. People swarm into the Berlin railway stations and at Berlin street-railway corners and crowd on cars just as they do here. The lines fairly seethe with cars. On the tracks ranged in the Potsdamer Bahnhof, for instance, during the rush hours, you will see trains consisting of eleven, twelve, and thirteen cars, mostly third-class accommodation, waiting to receive you. And when one is gone, another and an equally large train is there on the adjoining track and it is going to leave in another minute or two also. And when that is gone there will be another, and so it goes.
There is not the slightest desire evident anywhere to “pack” anybody in. There isn’t any evidence that anybody wants to make anything (dividends, for instance) out of straps. There are no straps. These poor, unliberated, Kaiser-ruled people would really object to straps and standing in the aisles, They would compel a decent service and there would be no loud cries on the part of “Christian gentlemen” operating large and profitable systems as to the “rights of property,” the need of “conserving the constitution,” the privilege of appealing to Federal judges, and the right of having every legal technicality invoked to the letter;—or, if there were, they would get scant attention. Germany just doesn’t see public service in that light. It hasn’t fought, bled, and died, perhaps, for “liberty.” It hasn’t had George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. All it has had is Frederick the Great and Emperor William I and Bismarck and Von Moltke. Strange, isn’t it? Queer, how Imperialism apparently teaches people to be civil, while Democracy does the reverse. We ought to get a little “Imperialism” into our government, I should say. We ought to make American law and American government supreme, but over it there ought to be a “supremer” people who really know what their rights are, who respect liberties, decencies, and courtesies for themselves and others, and who demand and see that their government and their law and their servants, public and private, are responsive and responsible to them, rather than to the “Christian gentlemen” who want to “pack ’em in.” If you don’t believe it, go to Berlin and then see if you come home again cheerfully believing that this is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. Rather I think you will begin to feel that we are getting to be the land of the dub and the home of the door-mat. Nothing more and nothing less.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN
During the first ten days I saw considerable of German night-life, in company with Herr A., a stalwart Prussian who went out of his way to be nice to me. I cannot say that, after Paris and Monte Carlo, I was greatly impressed, although all that I saw in Berlin had this advantage, that it bore sharply the imprint of German nationality. The cafés were not especially noteworthy. I do not know what I can say about any of them which will indicate their individuality. “Piccadilly” was a great evening drinking-place near the Potsdamer Platz, which was all glass, gold, marble, glittering with lights and packed with the Germans, en famille, and young men and their girls.