MODERN GERMANY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2489, 12 July 1909, Page 2

MODERN GERMANY.

(By Carlyle Smythe, in the Sydney Morning Herald.)

It may be accepted as almost an axiom of national study that without a' good knowledge of their language and literature it is hopeless to attempt a real comprehension of a foreign people. For one must be in a position to avoid the common tourist haunts, hotels, and pensions, , and live among the people themselves. But in Germany the stranger, however great his linguistic endowment, encounters many obstacles to a proper understanding ol the country and its problems that are not found in the study of any other foreign land. Some writers on Germany have labored to diagnose and describe the typical German, only to end by presenting us with an ideal that does not exist. Mrs Sidgwick, for instance, whose study oi domestic manners and customs in Germany in many respects excellent, the best bj far in our language, has drawn the por trait of a patient, humble, German wife, that really cannot be accepted, as typical. It is true to life only in certain classes in provincial centres. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a Germai. type. The units of the German ’Empirt are so distinct, and their inhabitants havt such pronounced individualities, that it is even, misleading to speak of the Germai: people. Between the primitive northen type to be met in the ‘‘free city” ol Lubeck and the intense Prussian type o: Koenigsberg, or the Americanised Prussiai of Berlin and the patriotic Bavarian oi Regensburg, there is as marked, a diver sity in ideas, manner, outlook, and ever language, as there is between an inbabi tant of Inverness and a citizen of Can terbury. In Hamburg, again, the visitoi is repeatedly reminded of France (the resi dent is rather proud of the likeness). Ii Bremen the atmosphere and sympathie: are strongly English. All this disturb the ordinary visitor’s standard of measure ment. The very multiplicity of the meam of information is confusing. In German) there is no newspaper or periodical tha can be accepted as typically representative in the sense that the Times, the JDaib Telegraph, or the Spectator is in England and the Temps, the Figaro, or the Hebat is in France. Newspapers and periodi cals abound in Germany with a ranke growth than they do even in America, am with a confusion of voices that has no been paralleled since Babel. Yet it wouh be scarcely accurate to describe any sec tion of German journalism as the "pro vincial press,” such as that term is ap plied 1 in England or France. It would in deed be almost nearer the facts to sa; that the only provincial press in German, comes from the capital. Paradox apart however, for the authority of the opinion expressed and the influence exercised b, the great dailies of Cologne, Frankfort Hamburg, and Munich, to mention onl the chief centres, equal, and sometime even surpass, those of the papers pul lished in Berlin; and it is certainly sui prising for the stranger to discover on of the leading organs of German publi opinion is published in Vienna, and tha the greatest illustrated weekly, the Him irirte Zeitung, which correspondens to th i Graphic or LTllustration, and to my min is the finest publication of its kind in th ‘ world, is issued not in Berlin but i i the compart ively small city of Leipsic. The modern Germans are thorough: i convinced that “they shall inherit tl earth.” To justify these pretensions the Ge > mans are meanwhile doing their best 1 provide the waste places with populatio ■ and supplies. Every week about 20,0 C 1 Germans are added to the population < } the Empire. That is said to be now tl - excess of births over deaths. That is f 2 say, every week measures have to I 1 taken to feed, clothe, educate, and ult 1 mately provide with employment 20,0( new inhabitants) and the number will, < 1 course, increase every year. That fai alone, coupled with the immense oversc t markets pf the Empire, explains the ur 7 exampled prosperity which the most cm i sory observer cannot help remarking everj where in modern Germany. To one lit 1 myself, who has not been in Germany f< 2 a decade, there is nothing more startlin i than the expansion and opulence of tl great ports and the growth of industri. t centres everywhere. It is not merely i , the old manufacturing regions about th r I.ubeck to Breslau, from Koenigsberg t - Rhine that this is noticeable. But fro) l Karlsruhe, there is the same amazing di: - play of industrial activity, which has eve t overflowed into Northern Italy and helpe 1 to transform Genoa into the principal poi s on the Mediterranean. A few years ag Nuremberg was little more than a medu 2 val relic; it is now a vast manufacturin f centre of 70Q,000 people. Hildesheim, fo i merly a “haunt of ancient peace,” no echoes with the hum of industrial activity i All this means an inexhaustible deman i for labor, and it is one of the boasts whic f nowadays one hears on all sides in Ge: - many that there is no leisured class i t the Empire. Everybody seems to he : - work; the men in the factories, the wome 1 in the fields. Women not only til manure, and sow the ground, but betwee ? Potsdam and Berlin they are employe 1 on railway construction works. In tl 2 very heart of Berlin, in the beautiful Tiei i garden, the work usually done in Londoi \ ienna, and Paris by men, the turnin i over of the beds and the cleaning < b the paths, is done by women. This gem ral employment of women in Germam b never entered in the .English statistics < l wages earned on the Continent, upsets a - the calculations on which are based tl usual comparison of the relative standar s of comfort among the working classes i - England and Germany. The boast tht 3 there is no leisured class in modern Gei 1 many seems to be justified. The old ide that the Germans are a race of idealisl 3 ‘ and philosophers must be revised; the ) are an empire of stern realists and tir< , less producers. And with the exceptio 3 of Berlin there is very little luxury o r extravagant display of wealth to be dii cerned. There is a high standard of coir j fort everywhere, but no waste. The shop ’ present nothing comparable with the e> - hibition of costly costumes to be seen i i London or Pans; and in the theatre* , even in the State opera houses, it is quit ’ the exception to see a "grande toilette, I except occasionally in some private bo or at a gala performance. This is eve: t the case in Berlin, which the ordinary Gei , man regards, comparatively speaking, a 3 most ns a modern Babylon. It is a: 1 extraordinary city. Here, in the Creates 3 industrial and commercial city in Europ ! to-day, with a population of close upo: 3 4,000,000 people, the great conundrum i when the inhabitants work and when the, - sleep. The streets and cafes are neve i empty; and between 5 o’clock in the after i noon and 3 in the morning they seer ’ as thronged as at midday. The “boule vardier” and the "badaud” are no longe "articles de Paris.” Their headquarter are the prodigious capital of modern Ger many.

For a quarter of an hour one morniii, recently a fearful panic appeared to rag in the New York Stock Exchange (say the St. James Budget]; brokers howlei and dashed madly about the floor, wavin' memoranda, and shrieking all kinds o orders Wu-Ting-Fang, the Ohinesi Minister, was in the strangers’ gallery and watched the confusion and the firinj of questions at the rate of sixty a minute Then the pandemonium ceased, and i was explained that the brokers, knowinj that the Chinese Minister' intended t< visit the exchange, arranged to give hin some idea of what a real panic was like They, therefore, temporarily suspendec business, while pretending to “knock tin bottom” out of the market. The soh reply of Wu-Ting-Fang was: “ I envv yoi Americans; we Orientals are such al mi emotional lot.”