Part 13 (1/2)
In Berlin particularly, where there are some thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty thousand unregistered women devoting themselves to the seemingly incompatible ends of rapidly acc.u.mulating gold while frantically pursuing pleasure, there is an amount of immorality unequalled in any capital in Europe. In the whole German Empire the average of illegitimacy is ten per cent. but in Berlin the average for the last few years is twenty per cent. Out of every five children born in Berlin each year one is illegitimate! It is questionable whether the increasing demands of the army and navy require such laxity of moral methods in providing therefor.
There is, however, a state church in Germany with its head in Berlin, and no doubt we may safely leave this matter in these better hands than ours.
I beg to say that in mentioning this subject I am quoting unprejudiced scientific investigators, who, I may say, agree, without a dissenting voice of importance, that Berlin has become the cla.s.sical problem along such lines. In the endeavor to compete with the gayeties elsewhere, a laxity has been encouraged and permitted that has won for Berlin in the last ten years, an unrivalled position as a purveyor of after-dark pleasures. Berlin not only produces a disproportionate number of such people as Diotrephes, in manners, but also a veritable horde of those who are like unto the son of Bosor.
After the sheltered home life and the severe discipline of the higher schools, a German youth is permitted a freedom unknown to us at the university. There is no record kept of how or where he spends his time. He matriculates at one or another of the universities, and for three, four, or, in the case of medical students, five years, he is free to work or not to work, as he pleases.
There are, however, three factors that serve as bit and reins to keep him in order. The final examination is severe, thorough, and cannot be pa.s.sed successfully by mere cramming; very few of the students have incomes which permit of a great range of dissipation; and not to pa.s.s the examination is a terrible defeat in life, which cuts a man off from further progress and leaves him disgraced.
These are forces that count, and which prevail to keep all but the least serious within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that overrides such considerations.
We in America suffer from a superabundance of men of aleatory dispositions, men who love to play cards with the devil, who rejoice to wager their future, their reputation, their lives, against the world. I admit a sneaking fondness for them. They are a great a.s.set, and a new country needs them, but if we have too many, Germany has too few. They are forever crying out in Germany for another Bismarck. Whenever in political matters, in foreign affairs, even in their religious controversies, things go wrong, men lift their hands and eyes to heaven and say, ”How different if Bismarck were here!” Bismarck and two of his predecessors as nation-builders were not afraid to throw dice with the world, and what ”the land of d.a.m.ned professors” could not do, they did.
When the young men from the Gymnasium come into the freedom of university life, they toss their heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh long and loud at the Philistine, but just as every German climax is incomplete without tears, so they too are soon singing: ”Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten da.s.s ich so traurig bin!” the gloom of the Teutoburger Wald settles down on them, and they buckle to and work with an enduring patience such as few other men in the world display, and join the great army here who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the Vaterland to the front.
The British Empire between 1800 and 1910 grew from 1,500,000 square miles to 11,450,000 square miles, and its trade from $400,000,000 to $11,020,000,000; not to mention the United States of America, now considered to be of noticeable importance, though we are universally sneered at by the Germans, to an extent that no American dreams of who has not lived among them, as a land of dollars, and, from the point of view of book-learning, dullards. But it is this, none the less, that Germany envies, and has set out to rival and if possible to surpa.s.s.
No wonder the training must be severe for the athletes who propose to themselves such a task.
For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the German student gives himself up to the rollicking freedom of the corps student's life. That life is so completely misunderstood by the foreigner that it deserves a few words of explanation.
I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically or even lightly with their wors.h.i.+p and their creeds, that once I shared, and with which lately I have been, under the most hospitable circ.u.mstances, invited to renew my acquaintance at the Commers and the Mensur.
One may be no longer a constant wors.h.i.+pper at the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen hair, and the enshrouding mystery of skirts, which make for curiosity and reverence in youth; one may have learned, however, the far more valuable lesson that the best women are so much n.o.bler than the best men, that the best men may still kneel to the best women; just as the worst women surpa.s.s the worst men in consciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloyalty, and degradation.
The female bandit in society, or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her weapons from an armory of foulness and cruelty unknown to men; just as the heroines and angels among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries to which few, if any, men have the key.
One returns, therefore, to the playground of one's youth with not less but with more sympathy and understanding. Far from being ”brutalizing guilds,” far from being mere unions for swilling and slas.h.i.+ng, the German corps, by their codes, and discipline, and standards of manners and honor, are, from the chivalrous point of view, the leaven of German student life. In these days many of them have club-houses of their own, where they take their meals in some cases and where they meet for their beer-drinking ceremonies.
There is of course a wide range of expenditure by students at the German universities, whether they are members of the corps or not. At one of the smaller universities in a country town like Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a little tutoring and the system of frei Tisch--money left for the purpose of giving a free midday meal to poor students--may sc.r.a.pe along with an expenditure of as little as twenty dollars a month. A member of a good corps at this same university is well content with, and can do himself well on, seventy dollars a month. I have seen numbers of students' rooms, with bed, writing-table, and simple furniture, perhaps with a balcony where for many months in the year one may write and read, which rent for sixty dollars a year. One may say roughly that at the universities outside the large towns, and not including the fas.h.i.+onable universities, such as Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on comfortably with fifty dollars a month. They have their coffee and rolls in the morning, their midday meal which they take together at a restaurant, and their supper of cold meats, preserves, cheese, and beer where they will. For seventy-five cents a day a student can feed himself.
The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle in his ”Economics,”
and not a nursery rhymer, who wrote: ”It is likewise well to rise before daybreak, for this contributes to health, wealth, and wisdom.”
”Early to bed and early to rise” is a cla.s.sic.
At Bonn, a member of one of the three more fas.h.i.+onable corps spends far more than these sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma-bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily to cultivate social relations, are unknown anywhere in Germany, for a student would make himself unpopularly conspicuous by extravagance. Two to three thousand dollars a year, even at Bonn, as a member of the best corps, would be amply sufficient and is considered an extravagant expenditure.
When the Earl of Ess.e.x was sent to Cambridge in Queen Elizabeth's time, he was provided with a deal table covered with baize, a truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs, and a wash-hand basin. The cost of all this was about $25. When students from all over Europe tramped to Paris to hear Abelard lecture, they begged their way. They were given special licenses as scholars to beg. Learning then, as it is still in Germany, alone of all the nations, was considered to be a pious profession deserving well of the world. We do not even know the names of our scholars in America. How many Americans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the fundamental laws regulating the trend of transformation in chemical and physical processes, or of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale who explains the mystery of sun spots and measures the magnetic forces that play around the sun? How many Frenchmen know Pierron's translation of Aeschylus, or Patin's studies in Greek tragedies, or Charles Maguin, or Maurice Croiset, or Paul Magou or Leconte de Lisle? while in England the ma.s.s of the people not only do not know the names of their scholars, but distrust all mental processes that are super-canine.
The origin of the Landmannschaften, Burschenschaften, and the Corps among the students dates back to the days when the students aligned themselves with more rigidity than now, according to the various German states from which they came. The names of the corps still bear this suggestion, though nowadays the alignment is rather social than geographical. The Burschenschaften societies of students had their origin in political opposition to this separation of the students into communities from the various states. The originators of the Burschenschaften movement, for example, were eleven students at Jena.
Sobriety and chast.i.ty were conditions of entrance, and ”Honor, Liberty, Fatherland” were their watchwords. It was deemed a point of honor that a member breaking his vows should confess and retire from the society.
The societies of the Burschenschaften are still considered to have a political complexion and the corps proper have no dealings with them.
In any given semester the number of students in one of these corps varies from as few as ten, to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs, upon the number of available men coming up to the university. Certain corps are composed almost exclusively of n.o.blemen, but none is distinctly a rich man's club.
An active member of a corps during his first two semesters may do a certain amount of serious work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a time ”to loaf and invite one's soul,” and little attempt is made to do more. Not a few men whom I have known, have not even entered a cla.s.s-room during the two or three semesters of this blossoming period.
I have spent many days and nights with these young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them in their jollity and good-fellows.h.i.+p, and I have agreed, and still agree, that ”Wir sind die Konige der Welt, wir sind's durch unsere Freude.”
They are by no means the swashbuckling, bullying, dissolute companions painted by those who know nothing about them. They may drink more beer than we deem necessary for health, or even for comfort; and they may take their exercise with a form of sword practice that we do not esteem, they may be proud of the scars of these imitation duels, but these are all matters of tradition and taste.