has suppressed them, strangled
them, suffocated them.

The heroes and heroines of my Black Forest Stories have been rudely
stuffed into the uniforms of officials, soldiers, factory hands, and
Red Cross nurses. The toy-shops have been developed, on borrowed
capital, into ship-building yards and factories for guns and
ammunition. The dreamer in dressing-gown and slippers has been forced
into the cap and apron of the workman. The small sovereigns have been
frightened into allegiance to the war lord, whose shadow falls upon
every corner of Germany.

In this new scheme of things it soon became evident, that the
individual was incompetent to take care of himself along lines best
suited to the plans of his new conqueror, therefore part of his
earnings were taken from all alike to provide against accident,
sickness, unemployment, and old age, and thus bind him fast to the
chariot of his warrior lord. Germany, having given up the belief that
the salvation of her own soul was of prime importance, became
suspiciously concerned about the souls and bodies of the people. We
are all to some extent following her example. The wise among us are
sad, the capitalist and his ally the demagogue are seen everywhere all
smiles, rubbing their hands, for the more people are made to believe
that they can be, and ought to be, taken care of, the more the
machinery is put into their hands, the more plunder comes their way,
the more indispensable they are.

The great majority of people who write or speak of Germany applaud
this situation; let me frankly say, what everybody will be saying in
twenty-five years, I deplore it. It is a purely artificial,
incompetent, and dreary solution. Even Hamlet were better than
Shylock.

Fortunately there is also a large and increasing class in Germany who
distrust the situation. They point to the fact that technical
education is producing an army of dingy artisans, who turn out the
cheap and nasty by the million, an education which chokes idealism and
increases the growing flippancy in matters of faith and morals; they
sneer, and well they may, at the manufactured art, the carpenter's
Gothic architecture, the sickly literature, the decaying interest in
scholarship; they find fewer and fewer candidates for exploration and
colonization; they rankle under the series of diplomatic ineptitudes
since Bismarck; they see France, Russia, and England antagonized and
leagued against them, and their own allies, Austria-H