and not for the
benefit of the pockets of a political aristocracy. The public service
is a guardian, not a predatory organization. In our country when a man
can do nothing else he becomes a public servant; in Germany he can
only become a public servant after severe examinations and ample
proofs of fitness. The superiority of one service over the other is
moral, not merely mechanical.

The street-cleaning department is recruited from soldiers who have
served their time, not over thirty-five years of age, and who must
pass a doctor's examination, and be passed also by the police. The
rules as to their conduct, their uniforms, their rights, and their
duties, down to such minute carefulness as that they may not smoke on
duty "except when engaged in peculiarly dirty and offensive labor,"
are here, as in all official matters in Germany, outlined in
labyrinthine detail. Sickness, death, accident, are all provided for
with a pension, and there are also certain gifts of money for long
service. The police and the street-cleaning department co-operate to
enforce the law, where private companies or the city-owned street-railways
are negligent in making repairs, or in replacing pavement
that has been disturbed or destroyed. There is no escape. If the work
is not done promptly and satisfactorily, it is done by the city,
charged against the delinquent, and collected!

One need go into no further details as to why and wherefore Berlin,
Hamburg, even Cologne in these days, Leipsic, Duesseldorf, Dresden,
Munich, keep their streets in such fashion, that they are as corridors
to the outside of Irish hovels, as compared to the city streets of
America; for the definite and all-including answer and explanation are
contained in the two words: no politics.

Berlin is governed by a town council, under a chief burgomaster and a
burgomaster, and the civic magistracy, and the police, these last,
however, under state control. The chief burgomaster and the
burgomaster are chosen from trained and experienced candidates, and
are always men of wide experience and severe technical training, who
have won a reputation in other towns as successful municipal
administrators.

In May, 1912, Wermuth, the son of the blind King of Hanover's
right-hand man, and he himself the recently resigned imperial secretary of
the treasury, was elected Oberburgomaster of Berlin. Such is the
standing of the men named to govern the German cities. It is as though
Elihu Ro