most men
of wide intellectual experience do, that the man who cannot wait must
be a coward at bottom, afraid of himself, or of the world, or of God.

This is wholly true of many Germans, despite the clang of arms, the
noise of steam-hammers, the shrieking locomotives, the puffing
steamers, the clinking of their gold, and the shouting of their
pedlers, now scattered all over the world. It is this combination, in
the same small area, of noise and repose; of political subserviency at
home and sabre-rattling abroad; of close organization at home and
colonizing inefficiency abroad; of moral and intellectual freedom, one
might almost call it moral and intellectual anarchy these days, and at
the same time submission to a domestic and social tyranny unknown to
us, that makes even a timid author feel that he is discovering the
Germans to his countrymen, so little do they know of this side of
German life.

They are not at all what the Americans and the English
think they are. They want peace, and we think they want war. The huge
armaments are intended to frighten us, just as were the grotesquely
ugly masks of the Chinese warriors. They intend to frighten us all
with their 850,000 soldiers, their great fleet, their air-ships and
aeroplanes, and when they go to Agadir again they hope to be able to
stay there till their demands are granted. They are the last comers
into the society of nations and they mean to insist upon recognition.
But this demand is an artificial one so far as the great mass of
Germans is concerned. It is the Prussian conqueror, and the small
class, officer, official and royal, representing that conqueror, who
are determined upon this course. They have unified Germany, they have
made the laws and forced obedience to them; and the heavily taxed,
hard-driven, politically powerless people are helpless.

Nowhere has socialistic legislation been so cunningly and skilfully
used for the enslavement of the people. No small part of every man's
wages is paid to him in insurance; insurance for unemployment, for
accident, sickness, and old age. There is but faint hope of saving
enough to buy one's freedom, and if the slave runs away he leaves, of
course, all the premiums he has paid in the hands of his master. A
general uprising is guarded against by a redoubtable force of
officials, officers, and soldiers, whose very existence depends upon
their defence of and upholding of the state under its present laws and
rulers.