have been for
centuries rather tribal than national, and are still rather
philosophical than political, rather idealistic than practical, rather
dreamy than adventurous. To organize this population for self-support
and self-defence, to ignore differences, racial and religious, to
stamp out the jealousies of small rulers, required severe measures,
and we are all learning to-day that democracies are seldom severe with
themselves. A tyrannical autocracy, led by the Great Elector,
Frederick the Great, and Bismarck, produced from this welter of
discord the astonishing results of to-day.

We have to-day, in an area of 208,780 square miles, 5,604 square miles
representing the lately conquered territory of Alsace-Lorraine, a
population of 64,903,423, of whom 1,028,560 are subjects of foreign
powers. To defend this area there are to be, according to figures
estimated even as this volume goes to press, a million men under arms
in the army and navy. Their enormous progress in trade, in industry,
in shipbuilding, is set out in full in every year-book, for the
curious to ponder. In so short a time, on so poor a soil, in such a
restricted space, with such a past of distress and disaster, and
dealing with such conflicting interests, a like success in nation-building
is unparalleled.

Industrial and martial beehive though it would seem to be, there are
provided for the native and the foreigner feasts of music, of art, and
of study that cost little. There are quiet streams, lovely, lonely
walks, and quaint towns that are nests of archaeological interest. In
Weimar, in Stuttgart, in Schwerin, in Duesseldorf, in Karlsruhe, not to
mention Munich, Leipsic, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfort, Hamburg, there
are centres of culture. The best that the mind of man creates is still
spread out there as of yore for whomsoever will to partake, but ever
in less abundance and with less enthusiasm. And these names are a mere
fraction of the number of such places.

The rivalries between the states is now to a large extent an elevating
rivalry of culture, dotting the map of Germany with resting-places for
the curious, the scholarly, or the sentimental traveller. You may have
plain living and high thinking in scores of the cities and towns of
Germany, and you will be considered neither an outcast nor an
eccentric; indeed, you will find no small part of the population your
companions.

You may stroll for miles on the banks of that tiny stream the
Zschopau, a