hat is the active propagandism of
socialism, which is anti-military, anti-monarchical, and anti-status
quo. Leaflets and books and pamphlets are widely distributed among the
school children; many of the teachers are in sympathy with these
obstructionist methods; and the authorities may feel that they must do
what they can to combat this teaching. In Prussia, on every side, and
in the industrial towns of Saxony, one sees the evidence of this
impotent discontent expressing itself either openly or in surly malice
of speech and manner. The streets of Berlin, and of the industrial
towns, show this condition at every turn, and when the Reichstag
closes with cheers for the Emperor, the Socialist members leave in a
body before that loyal ceremony takes place.

We in America are brought up to believe that the best cure for such
maladies is to open the wound, to give freedom of speech, to let every
boy and girl and man and woman find out for himself his citizen's path
to walk in. We have no policemen on our public platforms, no gags in
the mouths of our professors or preachers, no lurid pictures of
battles, no plastering of the walls of our schools and seminaries with
pictures of our rulers, and withal our German immigrants are perhaps
our best and most patriotic citizens. In America they think less and
do more, and for most men this is the better way. It makes life very
complicated to think too much about it.

Self-consciousness is the prince of mental and social diseases, as
vanity is the princess, and even self-conscious patriotism seems a
little unwholesome, not quite manly, and often even grotesque. It is
easy to say: "Dic mihi si fueris tu leo, qualis eris?" and if one is a
person of no great importance, it is an embarrassing question to
answer. In this connection I can only say that I should assume that my
lionhood was taken for granted without so much roaring, bristling of
the mane, and switching of the tail. It irritates those who are
discontented, it positively infuriates the redder democrats, and it
bores the children, and, worst of all, proclaims to everybody that the
lion is not quite comfortable and at his ease. The German lion is a
fine, big fellow now, with fangs, and teeth, and claws as serviceable
as need be, and it only makes him appear undignified to be forever
looking at himself in the looking-glass.

Whatever may be the right or wrong of these comparative methods of
training, Germans trained in the invest