ubmits to the military expert as a person about to undergo a
necessary operation would submit to a surgeon. It is a mistake to
suppose that the Germans, a highly intelligent and educated people, are
being cowed into submission by brutal non-commissioned officers.
Brutality, when it occurs, is looked upon as exceptional and incidental
to a system on the whole approved. The Germans would never tolerate the
severe discipline to which they are subjected did they not willingly
submit to it. They regard a highly efficient army as necessary to the
safety of the Fatherland, and they are willing to leave the
responsibility for the means of securing efficiency to the experts.
During the Franco-German war, when a student in the University of
Berlin, I talked with some of the brightest of the younger men about
their military obligations, and I found that they took precisely the
view just stated. The Pomeranian peasant may submit to military
dictation in a dull, half-instinctive fashion. The flower and elite of
German intelligence submit to it no less--from conviction.

How shall we account for the unique predominance of the expert in German
life? The explanation would seem to lie in the phrase invented by a
brilliant writer of the last century, "Deutschland ist Hamlet" (Germany
is Hamlet). The Germans are a resolute people--not at all, as has been
erroneously supposed, a nation of dreamers--just as Hamlet, according to
recent criticism, was essentially of a resolute character. In the days
of the Hansa and of the Hohenstaufen the Germans cut a great figure in
oversea commerce and in war. They were great doers of deeds. The Germans
are intensely volitional, but also intensely intellectual. Hence the
native hue of resolution has sometimes been sicklied o'er by too much
thinking. The intellect of the German refuses to sanction action until
the successive steps to be taken have been worked out with logical
accuracy, and a scientific groove, so to speak, has been hollowed out
along which action can proceed. As soon as this is accomplished, the
flood of volitional impulse enters gladly into the channel prepared for
it and moves on in it with irresistible force. Bismarck represents the
active side, as the eminent philosophers of the German people represent
the side of logical construction. The two sides must be taken together
to understand German history and the tendencies prevailing in Germany
today.

Underneath it all, of course, is Ger