window. "The mailed fist," "the rattling of the sabre," "the friend in
shining armor," "querelle allemande," are all phrases born in Germany
in the last thirty years.

She even sees herself a little out of focus, and though I admit her
precarious position in the heart of Europe, she exaggerates the
necessity for her autocratic military government to meet the
situation. That philosophical and literary radical Lord Morley, now
wearing a coronet, in the land where logic is a foundling and
compromise a darling, writes: "A weak government throws power to
something which usurps the name of public opinion, and public opinion
as expressed by the ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more
capricious and more vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to
say, is exactly the opinion of the German autocrats, who maintain that
no democracy can be a strong military power. It remains for England,
and perhaps later America, to prove her wrong.

The sovereign lady
Germania, being of this temper and disposition, of this psychological
make-up, let us look at her dealings with certain embarrassing
problems in her own household. The over-stimulation of ill-regulated
mental activity as the result of regimental education is one of the
minor problems. Some fourteen million dollars worth of cheap and nasty
literature is peddled by the agents of certain publishing houses, and
sold all over Germany to those recently taught to read but not trained
to think; and this, it is to be remembered, is still a land of low
wages, of strict economies, and of small expenditures on books. For
Germany that is an enormous sum and represents a very wide-spread
evil. I recognize that it is not only in Germany, but in France,
England, and America, that the ethically hysterical have assumed that
modesty and health and common-sense are characteristics of the
intellectually mediocre. That the neglect of all, and the breaking of
some, of the Ten Commandments is essential to the creation of art or
literature, or necessary to a courageous freedom of living, is a
contention with which I agree less and less the more I know of art,
literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this
volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in
Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of
the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for
the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no lin