PRUSSIA'S WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 11

PRUSSIA'S WOMEN

AN AMERICAN OPINION.

One of.the greatest evils of the Prussian- system is its treatment of women. In his recently-published "Prussian Memories" Mr. Poultney Bigelow writes: The word Home, as we -understand it in the English-speaking world, ; does not exist in Prussia, but in its place are innumerable restaurants and beer-gardens ; and where we ask a friend to our family circle the German takes him to a Stammtisch or club-table, where amid the clatter of dishes and beer-mugs the Teuton learns those manners which make him proverbial as a social unit. Young men and even children of the better classes are apt to see more of the gregarious pothouse life than of the home with sisters and parents. A little of it goes a long way to one who is not by nature Bohemian; and a decently-bred student of the English-speaking world soons sickens of a society where waitresses and chambermaids are handled with more freedom than fastidiousness, and where even women of social position are regarded as a man's chattel. I have known German students to weep in reciting verses of Heine or Goethe, stand up through long Wagnerian operas in ecstasy of worship, and soon afterwards gorge themselves with a sausage and beer, resting now and then to rhapsodise on a theme of Kultuior pass a ribald joke with a bier-mad-chen When first I engaged a German governess for my , children ' I was surprised to learn that lia.lf her meagre earnings were to be deducted and sent by me to her brother, a young officer in the army; but she told me this was a universal custom, and she did her share in the matter as cheerfully as though it was the case of a crippled sister rather than a hulking giant abundantly capable of supporting not .merely himself, but a family into the bargain. I was pointed out some years ago several smart shopgirls and waitresses who had achieved the distinction of maintaining each a student-at the university, the understanding being that they were to be legally married as soon as he had passed professional ■ examinations. The number of students and unmarried officers and officials who keep a mistress to do their cooking, washing, and scrubbing, in other words, to whom the common slavey is a servant for the whole circle of his appetites, is appallingly large, if I may credit the statements of economists and the initiated. . Yet this does not preclude an exhibition of sentimentality in honeymooners that would cause police interference were it exercised in our community. In short the Prussian, whose patron saint is Queen Louise, is a land of paradox in the matter of home life; and only those who have spent many years of intimacy there realise the difficulties of forming a final opinion—although what I have myself experienced causes me to recommend the a.uthor of "Elizabeth a.nd Her German Garden" as altogether the most kindly critic in this dangerously delicate matter.