ls independence and leaves us with mediocrities
gesticulating in the dark, and making phrases in a vacuum.

There are, it is true, charming hostesses in Berlin, and ladies who
gather in their drawing-rooms all that is most interesting in the
intellectual and political life of the day; but they are almost
without exception obedient to the traditional officialdom, leaning
upon a favor that is at times erratic, and without the daring of
independence which is the salt of all real personality.

There are, too, country-houses. One castle in Bavaria, how well I
remember it, and the accomplished charm of its owner, who had made its
grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is detached from the real
life of the nation, which is forever taking its cue from the court,
leaving any independent or imposing social and political life benumbed
and without vitality. There is no free and stalwart opposition, no
centres of power; and much as one tires of the incessant and feverish
strife political and social at home, one returns to it taking a long
breath of the free air after this hot-house atmosphere, where the
thermometer is regulated by the wishes of an autocrat.

The press necessarily reflects these conditions. The Social Democrats,
divided into many small parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes,
divided as well, give the press no single point of leverage. These
political parties wrangle among themselves over the dish of votes, but
what is put into the dish comes from a master over whom they have no
control. If they upset the dish they are turned out as they were in
1878, 1887, 1893, and 1907, and when they return they are better
behaved.

The parties themselves are not real, since thousands of voters lean to
the left merely to express their discontent; but they would desert the
Social Democrats at once did they think there was a chance of real
governing power for them. A small industrial was warned of the awful
things that would happen did the Socialists come into power. "Ah," he
replied, "but the government would not permit that!" What has the
press to chronicle with insistence and with dignity of such flabby
political and social conditions?

The press may be, and often is, annoying, as mosquitoes are annoying,
but its campaigns are dangerous to nobody. As I write, it is hard to
believe that within a few days the members of a new Reichstag are to
be elected. There are political meetings, it is true, there are
articles