Part 25 (2/2)
Germania as a malicious vestal clad in horrid armor and making mischief in the world is a very present danger; Germania with a torch lighting the world to salvation is a phantom, a ghost, seen by hasty and nervous observers, who rush out to proclaim an adventure that may excite a pa.s.sing interest in themselves. Her methods to-day are solution by suffocation; no wonder those of us who loved her in our youth see in her a ghost to-day. I am thankful that I was her pupil when she had other things to teach, when she wore other robes, when she was modest, and not s.n.a.t.c.hing at the trident of Neptune, nor clutching at the casque of Mars.
”Wir wissen zu viel, wir wollen zu wenig,” became the national complaint, and Germany has attempted to transform herself. She has succeeded in the transformation, but the transformation is not a success. Even that learned English friend of Germany, Lord Haldane, does not see, or will not see, that a people thinking themselves into action, instead of developing into action naturally, through action, must suffer from the artificiality of the process. Lord Haldane applauds their thought-out organization in industrial, commercial, and military matters, but he fails to mention the squandering of individual capacity and energy that has resulted in Germany's growing dependence upon a wooden bureaucracy. Organization is only good as a means; it is stupefying as an end. Germany has organized herself into an organization, and is the most over-governed country in the world.
What every democracy of free men wants is not as much, but as little, organization as possible compatible with economical administration of industry, the army, the navy, and the affairs of the state. You can think out a game of chess, but you cannot think out life ahead of the living of it without cramping it and finally killing it. Life is to live, not to think, after all. Neither a nation nor an individual has ever thought out the way to power. This is where the metaphysician invariably fails when he mistakes thinking for living, when he mistakes organization, which can never be more than a mould for life, for life itself. To plan an army is not to produce one, however good the plan; even to plan a campaign, once you have an army, is to court disaster unless there is a living man to thrust the plan aside when the emergencies arise that make up the whole of life, but have nothing to do with organization.
If all men were tailors, or lawyers, or farmers, or miners, then we could think out an organization into which they would fit, but unfortunately for the metaphysician, all men are not categories; all men are men! In like manner, if all men were cases, then government by lawyers would be successful, but men and women are neither categories nor cases. It is purely fantastic, the mere reasoned confusion of the philosopher, to point to Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel and their successors as the originators of Germany's progress. If Germany had developed along those lines, she would be something quite different from what she is. The Great Elector, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck made Germany, and her philosophers and pedants are only responsible for the softness that made it possible. Metaphysicians and lawyers have their place, but they will inevitably ruin any people whom they are permitted to govern.
The reader will perhaps look back through these pages to discover a contradiction. He will seem to find evidence that Germany's position in the world called for just this present Germany, which is a factory town with a garden attached, surrounded by an armed camp. I deny the contradiction. I have tried to a.n.a.lyze and to give the reasons for Germany's development along these meretricious and disappointing lines, but I am the last to admit that the outcome is satisfactory, or that the rest of the world should look to Germany to point out the way of salvation. A steaming orchid-house is not the place to go to learn to grow the fruits of the earth in their due season for the nourishment of a free people. You will find some brilliantly colored flowers there, in the gay uniforms of the artificial tropics, but they shrink and shrivel in the open air. They have been trained to grow luxuriantly in this stifling atmosphere, but they feed no one, please no one, who will not consent to live in a gla.s.s house with them.
Because a people is blindfolded, its preachers and pedagogues gagged, its officials subservient, is all the more reason why they should be easily led, but no reason at all for supposing that they will lead anybody else.
I have said here and there that I have learned much, and that we all have much to learn from Germany. I permit myself to repeat it. She has shown us that the short-cut to the governing of a people by suppression and strangulation results in a dreary development of mediocrity. She has proved again that the only safety in the world for either an individual or a nation is to be loved and respected, and in these days no one respects slavery or loves threats.
From an American point of view, any sacrifice, any war, were better than the domination of the Prussian methods of nation-making. No nation should be by its traditions and its ideals more ready to arm itself, and to keep itself armed if necessary for years, against the possibility of the transference of such methods to the American continent than the United States of North America.
”Theuer ist mir der Freund, doch auch den Feind kann ich nutzen, Zeigt mir der Freund, was ich kann, lehrt mir der Feind was ich soll,”
writes Schiller.
We Americans have much to learn from both our friends and our enemies.
We have both in Germany, and we should cultivate the temper of mind which profits by the encouragement of our friends and the criticism of our foes.
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