ng not unlike Simplicissimus, and
any German annoyed at the criticisms of his national life from the pen
of a foreigner, may well turn to his own Simplicissimus, and be humbly
grateful that no foreign pen-point can possibly pierce more deeply,
than this domestic pencil, at work in his own country.

The danger for the critic and the wit, which few avoid, is that with
incomparable advantages over his opponent he will not play fair. In
spite of the awful reputation of our so-called "yellow press," which
is often boisterously impudent, and sometimes inclined to indulge in
comments and revelations of the private affairs of individuals which
can only be dubbed coarse and cowardly, there is seldom a descent to
the indescribably indecent caricatures which one finds every week in
the illustrated papers in Germany. As we have noted elsewhere, just as
the citizens of Berlin, as one sees them in the streets and in public
places, give one the impression that they are not house-trained, so
many of the pens and pencils which serve the German press, leave one
with the feeling that their possessors would not know how to behave in
a cultivated and well-regulated household.

Every gentleman in Germany must have been ashamed of the writing in
the German press after the sinking of the Titanic. There was a blaze
of brutal pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across any claim to
gentlemanliness on the part of the majority. When every brave man in
the world was lamenting the death of Scott, the English Arctic
explorer, one German paper intimated that he had committed suicide to
avoid the bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack of generosity
toward his expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such a cur
should have escaped unthrashed, even among the German journalists.
These two examples of lack of fine feeling mark them for what they
are. Among gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark of breeding is
more often discovered in what one does not say, does not write, does
not do, than in positive action. There was much, at that time, when
fifteen hundred people had been buried in icy water, and scores of
American and English gentlemen had gone down to death, just in answer
to: "Ladies first, gentlemen!" that should have been left unsaid and
unwritten. The quality of the German journalist, with half a dozen
exceptions, was betrayed to the full in those few days, and many a
German cheek mantled with shame.

However, a man may eat with his