peech and hardy lack of sentiment, still made
no reference to her daughter's trouble. Marriage is to the Germans
such an earth-to-earth affair, as Gard perceived, that he marveled
she did not unbosom herself capaciously about what must be a
mother's anxiety. But the Teuton daughter is like a glove that can
be put on or cast off by the sovereign male. She is meant to be
toughened, exposed to rude blasts, fortified, to be able to support
the draft-mare burdens of Teuton wifehood.

CHAPTER XVII

IMMORALITY AND OBSCENITY

Gard now descended unwittingly into one of the darkest regions of
German life, and one which foreign publics had persistently missed
or voluntarily overlooked in their chorus of approbation of the
race.

It is a familiar dictum that one can judge of a nation pretty fairly
by the position and treatment of its women. Kirtley had never, in
America, heard anything about Deutschland in this light. But he soon
found in Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics
on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the
general emphasis laid on German preeminence. This emphasis was
mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about
achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of
the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept
widespread. German femininity was assumed to be of a predominating
excellence to match that of German masculinity.

No study of a people is indeed complete without an unglossed inquiry
into its conduct toward its women and children. To say that the
German's business traits are the same and as reputable as those of
other races, is below the mark. In this secular domain he is
compelled to deal and to act within the accepted formulae of trade.
To do otherwise would be to ostracize himself.

But he is in no such competition or is subject to no such exactions
in his attitude toward his own women and children. With them he does
as he pleases and his real nature stands forth. These truly vital
matters have been passed over as if unnoticed by the world, as has
been said, and still it wonders why it cannot learn what the German
is--does not understand him. He is, perhaps more than anyone, what
he is toward his own inferiors--toward those who are weaker and
dependent.

The question of German womanhood and girlhood should not therefore
be blinked by the earnest contemplator. It was not long before Gard
was saying to