s no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of
imitation." Thus writes John Stuart Mill, and what else can be said of
the political activities of the Germans? What journalist or what
patriot indeed can take seriously a majority that has no power? What
people can call itself free to whom its rulers are not responsible?
The Social Democrats, at the moment of writing, have won one hundred
and ten seats in the Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are
beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a constitution is a dream,
and if they are cantankerous or truculent the Reichstag will be
dismissed by a wave of the hand. Say what one will, they are a
mammillary people politically, and the strongest party in the
Reichstag is merely an energetic political mangonel. Their leaders
moult opinions, they do not mould them, and could not translate them
into action if they did.

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so strongly radical, but
nothing will come of it. The Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg,
did not hesitate to take an early opportunity, after the
opening of the new Reichstag, to state boldly that the issue was
Authority versus Democratization, and that he had no fear of the
result. It is customary for the newly elected Praesidium, the
president and two vice-presidents of the Reichstag, to be received in
audience by the Emperor. On this occasion the Socialists forbade their
representative to go, and the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive
any of them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans bleibt immer
Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar hack of good manners only
brought contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as
the outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. Such behavior is
not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this
enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any
rate for some time to come. "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a
mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart
from him."

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we Americans perhaps beyond
all other peoples have profited by her literature, her philosophy, her
music, her scientific and economic teaching. We have kneaded these
things into our political as well as into our intellectual life.
"Intellectual emancipation, if it does not give us at the same time
control over ourselves, is poisonous." And who writes thus? Goethe!
But t