lar of his race, and the city of
his adoption had become a pilgrimage attracting worshippers from all
parts of Europe. Death was merciful to him. The last act of his life
was as beautiful as the others. It was not preceded by the gradual
dissolution of his physical and intellectual strength; rather was it
like the burning out of a flame. He passed away in an apotheosis, and
the last words uttered by the dying poet, "_Mehr Licht, mehr Licht_"
(More light, more light), have become for all future generations the
final expression of his philosophy and the symbol of his personality.

CHAPTER VII

THE SERVICE OF THE CITY IN GERMANY[19]

[19] Written in 1913.

I.

All English students interested in Germany owe a deep debt of
gratitude to the unremitting labours of Mr. William Harbutt Dawson in
the fields of Teutonic scholarship. He is one of a gallant band of
some half-dozen publicists who, amidst universal neglect, have done
their utmost to popularize amongst us a knowledge of German life and
German people. Mr. Dawson's last book is certain to take rank as a
political classic. It is a lucid exposition of "Municipal Life and
Government in Germany" (Longmans and Co., 12s. 6d. net). City
administration and city regulations are a subject which no literary
art can make very exciting, but, difficult and forbidding though it
be, it is a subject which yields in importance and interest to no
other. There is certainly no other subject which will reveal to us
more of the secrets of German greatness.

II.

For the greatness of Germany is not to be explained by her unwieldy
army, her red-tape bureaucracy, her impotent Reichstag, her effete
Churches. Her army, Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weakness
and not of strength. The true greatness of Germany is largely due to a
factor ignored by most writers, ignored even by Mr. Dawson in all his
previous works--namely, the excellence of German municipal
institutions, the intensity of her civic life. We have been too much
accustomed to think of Germany only as a despotic empire. She might be
far more fittingly described as a country of free institutions, a
federation of autonomous cities. We fondly imagine that ours is the
only country where self-government prevails. Readers who might still
entertain this prejudice will carry away from Mr. Dawson's book the
novel political lesson that Germany, much more than Great Britain,
deserves to be called a self-governing nat