Crossing the Russian border in the night, we arrived at Berlin almost before the dawn; the city lies only three hours (by train) beyond the Russian line.
The station we entered was spacious and clean, in sharp contrast to the dirty stations of Russia; we were evidently come into a land blessed with a civilization of higher type. Leaving the car, we were instantly beset by a regiment of smartly uniformed porters—old soldiers all of them—and were piloted by one tall veteran to a waiting fiacre, which soon carried us to the Hotel Savoy. It was early, not yet five o’clock, but the streets were already alive with an orderly and animated throng, who appeared to be workmen largely, carpenters, masons and day-laborers, each clad in his distinctive laborer’s garb. They were on their way to work, for the working day is long in Germany, ten and twelve hours, and the workingman is up betimes. We passed over asphalted streets where men in military-looking uniforms, with hose in hand, were washing down their surfaces, while others with big coarse brooms were sweeping them clean. Berlin is a clean city, clean and neat as the proverbial German in America is known to be. Alighting from our carriage, I was greeted in my own tongue, by the friendly mannered concierge, who instantly marked me for an American, and gave us comfortable quarters such as American dollars usually secure.
A DAINTY NURSE MAID, BERLIN.
H and I were now alone, our companions, Mr. and Mrs. C having left us at Warsaw, where they would spend a week or two and learn something of Poland. Perhaps I might tell you right here, that the next morning, as we were leaving the hotel, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and, turning round, faced the two Chicago travelers just then arrived. They had cut short their stay in Warsaw, for the only American-speaking guide in that city was away on a vacation, and German and French to them were as impossible as Polish. They confessed, also, that they had sorely missed their American fellow-travelers, and had hurried after us, hoping they might induce us to sojourn a little while in their good company.
We spent our single day without trying to see museums and picture galleries, but taking a guide and a carriage, drove about the city and viewed its avenues and parks, its markets and busy thoroughfares, and noble public buildings, to catch what glimpse we might of the waxing Capital of the German Empire. The first impression Berlin makes upon the stranger, especially the stranger new-come from Russia, is that of its cleanliness and orderliness; and, I think, I here also felt the sympathy of blood-kinship with the well set-up and neatly clad men and women, whose faces might have been those of my fellow countrymen of St. Louis, Cincinnati or New York. Berlin, to-day, fitly typifies modern Germany and the modern German spirit. We drove everywhere over smooth streets, kept scrupulously clean. On either hand stretched miles of new and handsome buildings, modern in architecture and modern in construction, while the signs I saw were in Latin Text, instead of the Gothic, a striking evidence of German progression.
When we came to the lovely Unter Den Linden, we left the carriage and wandered beneath its umbrageous trees and enjoyed, as every one must, the beauty of its vistas of greensward and carefully tended flowers. The German loves his flowers almost as devotedly as does his English cousin. We strolled also along the famous Thier Garten, which would be a magnificent boulevard in any city; and which the German Kaiser has sought to ornament with innumerable ponderous groups of sculpture, preserving for the astonished world the commonplace memories of paltry ancestors. How much better would it have been to have adorned this stately thoroughfare with statues of illustrious Germans, whose great deeds and works have contributed to the world’s enlightenment and the Fatherland’s renown! To a Democrat, bred to contemn the empty glitter and pretense of inherited privilege, it almost stirs one’s anger to see so splendid a public highway as the Thier Garten thus arrogantly defaced.
In this Capital of an Empire, whose foundation is set on bayonets and swords and the “biggest guns,” where militarism runs riot, there is no surprise in finding the streets filled with soldiers and officers, and to meet frequently a marching company, nor does it astonish one to see here the extreme development of the spirit of military caste. Here, the civilian, man as well as woman—no matter how well clad he or she may be—must turn aside for strutting officer and also, as for that, for the common soldier, and all traffic must hold back to let a company of soldiery pass by, even though they are out only on errand of trivial exercise. Here in Germany, perhaps as nowhere else, have the clever supporters of Royal and Imperial pretension worked the army racket to the limit, through creating a perpetual scare that greedy neighbors will devour the Fatherland. The citizen of Berlin is never allowed to forget that little more than a century ago, Cossack hordes pastured their ponies in the parks and gardens of the German capital; and can gallop there again from their Polish camps in a single day. The army has been built up on the pretense that it is necessary for national defense, and thus the Kaiser, who is permitted to occupy the position of army chief, holds at his command these enormous military forces, while he uses them the rather to exalt his own prerogative and subvert the people’s inborn rights of individual sovereignty, which is the highest gift of God to man.
The splendid building of the Reichstag, where the Socialist party of Germany, to-day, makes its almost vain attempt toward securing to the people a freer exercise of man’s natural rights, is thus menaced by the colossal military group which stands before it, as though to teach the lesson that the sword still rules the Fatherland.
In the evening, our guide, who had privately confessed to me that within the year he would travel to New York there to become manager of a great hotel, led us to one of the more notable Bier Garten, where we saw a most German vaudeville, the feats of whose performers were greeted with vociferous hochs, and where we listened to a splendid band, and where H had her first sight of ponderous Germans absorbing beer, with which spectacle she was much impressed.