n fact, he suggests that even the habitual drunkard is often a weak,
amiable creature cut out for family life; only, he has sought it at
the public-house instead of on his own hearth.

Herr Riehl is, in fact, deeply concerned to see amongst his
countryfolk a gradual slackening of family ties, a widespread selfish
individualism amongst women, an abdication of duty and authority
amongst men. His views about women sound outrageous to-day, chiefly
because he wants to apply them to all women without distinction; and
also because they display a total want of consideration for the
welfare and the wishes of women themselves. But his position is
interesting, because with some modifications it is the position still
taken by the majority of German men; naturally, not by the most
advanced and intelligent, but by the average German from the Spree to
the Danube. He thinks that woman was made for man, and that if she has
board, lodging, and raiment, according to the means of her menfolk,
she has all she can possibly ask of life. When her menfolk are
peasants, she must work in the fields; when they belong to the middle
or upper classes, her place is in the kitchen and the nursery. Unless
he is exceptionally intelligent he does not understand that this
simple rule is complicated by modern economic conditions, and by the
enormous number of women thrown on their own resources. He would send
them as Herr Riehl did, to the kitchens and nurseries of other people;
or he would give up the problem in despair, as Herr Riehl did,
admitting with a sigh that modern humanitarianism forbids the
establishment of a lethal chamber for the superfluous members of a
weaker sex.

The most modern German women are in direct opposition to Herr Riehl,
and it must be said that some of their leaders are enthusiastic rather
than sensible. They are drunk with the freedom they claim in a country
where women are not even allowed to attend a political meeting except
with the express consent of the police. In their ravings against the
tyranny of men they lose all historical sense, just as an American
does when he describes a mediaeval crime as if it had been committed by
a European with a twentieth-century conscience. They charge men with
keeping half humanity in a degrading state of slavery, and attribute
all the sins of civilisation to the enforced ignorance and
helplessness of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost
beyond the German language to express,