eet silences of sorrow that are barred to foreign mourners? If he
have not, then all this clamor at the doors of national privacy is
well enough; but let them remember that when nations lose their
dignity and their racial pride, there is sure to follow the squabbling
and the jealousy, the rough speech and vulgar manners, of the domestic
circle, in the same plight of spiritual shamelessness. The best that
any of us learn is to be a little more patient, a little more
charitable, a little more careful of the dignity of others in our own
homes, or abroad, and then the light goes out!

XI CONCLUSION

Criticism is temptingly easy when it consists, as it so often does, in
merely noting what is different, or what is not there. Helpful
criticism I take to be the discovery of what is there, and its
revelation, with an examination of its history, its truth, and its
value. That kind of criticism is close to creation itself, and few
there are sufficiently self-sacrificing to endow and to train
themselves to undertake it.

It makes life very complicated to think too much about it, but to take
a step further, and to attempt to apply logic to life, that way
madness lies. It is of the very essence of life that things are never
as they ought to be, but only as they can be for the time being. We
may be optimistic enough to believe that this is a good world, but it
is none the less true that unbending virtue seldom receives the
temporal rewards for which most of us are striving, and with which
alone most of us are content. We are forced to doubt, therefore, the
goodness which finds life easy and comfortable, and since we must
still at all hazards be charitable in our judgments of one another, we
become, most of us, opportunists in morals.

In dealing with the men, manners, affairs, and the soul of a stranger
people, therefore, one must use what experience, knowledge, good-humor,
and impartiality one has, without assumption of superiority,
without making high demands, and without ceasing to be at least as
opportunist as we are at home. Because things are different, they are
not necessarily better or worse, and if certain things are not there,
it is perhaps because they do not belong there. Above all, we should
refrain from applying a stern logic to the life of another country
which we never use in measuring our own.

The whole north of Germany is a flat, barren plain, with the Elbe, the
Oder, the Weser flowing west and north. Th