nsight into the German point of view.
Coming into line with the rest of Europe Germany accepted the idea of
Freedom in November, 1918. She watched how it worked and then very
quickly turned her back on it. In truth, Freedom is not congenial to
Germans. Had Germany won she hoped to impose her type of civilization
everywhere, and she saw little harm in the fact of imposition.
Inferior nations ought to be raised to Germany's cultural level by
force, and they ought to be prevented from running amuck
internationally, also by force. The German mind viewed complacently
the bondage of the small nations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It
did not think that Czechs or Poles lost anything by being governed from
Vienna. Its only reservation was that it might be still better for
them if they were governed from Berlin. Berlin still believes that
Alsatians and Danes and Poles and Russians and Czechs are better in
health under German discipline. Europe organized militarily was the
German conception of the future--that some one should order and some
one should obey everywhere.

Great Britain caught the idea through Carlyle, though it was more
congenial to the Germanic type of Southern Scot than to English or
Irish. We talked of "captains of industry," and the "aristocracy of
talent," and "benevolent autocracy," though we could not realize them.
But to modern Germany this idea was society's cement. It was preached
from the Lutheran pulpit, it was taught by sergeants in the Army, it
was unfolded and beflagged by politicians on election day. There were
rebels against it but no national movement opposed it. It was even
rooted in the home where husband ruled wife, and father ruled children
with complete authority, and a man could point to his _frau_ or his
_kind_ with his index finger, and say "To-morrow you will do that. Now
you shall do this!"

The opposite note of liberty was at Moscow where the children not
infrequently, even under Tsardom, went on strike against their
teachers, where servants tell masters what they ought to do, where a
Rasputin is asked advice on imperial policy, the land of the Slavs
where obedience is at its lowest ebb, and all the parks and gardens and
country-sides languish naturally in disorder. "Love to Russia is
really love to the old mother-pig," said Suvorin. "But no matter, you
get used to it." The German, however, never gets used to it. That is
why in the old days the farms of the German col