t, and which prevail to keep all but the
least serious within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined,
so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the
recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of
mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that overrides
such considerations.

We in America suffer from a superabundance of men
of aleatory dispositions, men who love to play cards with the devil,
who rejoice to wager their future, their reputation, their lives,
against the world. I admit a sneaking fondness for them. They are a
great asset, and a new country needs them, but if we have too many,
Germany has too few. They are forever crying out in Germany for
another Bismarck. Whenever in political matters, in foreign affairs,
even in their religious controversies, things go wrong, men lift their
hands and eyes to heaven and say, "How different if Bismarck were
here!" Bismarck and two of his predecessors as nation-builders were
not afraid to throw dice with the world, and what "the land of damned
professors" could not do, they did.

When the young men from the
Gymnasium come into the freedom of university life, they toss their
heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh long and loud at the
Philistine, but just as every German climax is incomplete without
tears, so they too are soon singing: "Ich weiss nicht was soll es
bedeuten dass ich so traurig bin!" the gloom of the Teutoburger Wald
settles down on them, and they buckle to and work with an enduring
patience such as few other men in the world display, and join the
great army here who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the Vaterland
to the front.

The British Empire between 1800 and 1910 grew from 1,500,000 square
miles to 11,450,000 square miles, and its trade from $400,000,000 to
$11,020,000,000; not to mention the United States of America, now
considered to be of noticeable importance, though we are universally
sneered at by the Germans, to an extent that no American dreams of who
has not lived among them, as a land of dollars, and, from the point of
view of book-learning, dullards. But it is this, none the less, that
Germany envies, and has set out to rival and if possible to surpass.
No wonder the training must be severe for the athletes who propose to
themselves such a task.

For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the German student gives
himself up to the rollicking freedom of the corps student's li