CITIES OF PEACE AND WAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 9138, Issue 9138, 10 February 1910, Page 2

CITIES OF PEACE AND WAR.

GERMAN AND ENGLISH CONTRASTS. (By Robert Blatchford.) The Germans resemble the English; but their cities are not like ours. We have no such cities as Rothenberg and Nuremberg and Munich: we have no city like Berlin. A oolleague of mine who is now wandering in the East has recently described Berlin as the newest, cleanest, and brightest town in the world. These three adjectives are well chosen. Berlin is clean. I have seen no city so clean, except Munich. Berlin i% bright. By day it is bright, and by night it is the most brilliantly lighted city I have visited. But m# friend's first adjective is the most appropriate and descriptive of the three: Berlin is new. It is all_ new. It is as new as the German eminence in arms and trade and culture. It is a new capital of a new Germany.. The notes of it are opulence and order. It looks successfully, and it looks solidly. It has been planned and built with German sense and German thoroughness. It is not as beautiful as Munich: it is more handsome than beautiful. But it is perhaps the best planned, the best ordered, the most sonsible city in Europe. Moreover, and this is important, its streets, its houses, and its public buildings are all evidences of a civic spirit which wc should seek in vain in any city in England. I was in Berlin for three .days and nights. Do not forget the nights, because Berlin seems never to go to sleep. And I returned to England via Hamburg and Harwich. And I drove in a taxi-cab from Liverpool street the Borough: through the Borough High street. And I saw in the Borough dirty streets, and dirty houses, and dirty people. Crowds of ill-dressed, unwashed, slovenly, unhappy-looking women and men and children. I need not in an English paper desoribe the Borough nor its inhabitants. There are hundreds of similar districts inhabited by similar people in the great towns of England.

THE CLEANEST CITY. I have not 6een one street in all Germany as poor, as ugly, a 6 unclean as the Borough High street. I saw more dirt in five minutes in Bermondsey than I saw in Germany in three weeks. Everji street in Berlin is clean, I believe every house is clean. I did not 6ee a dirty woman or child in that city. I saw only two beggars in Germany, and they were cripplcs. I saw no rags, no face 6 discoloured or spoiled by drunkenness ot, vice. I found among the people in all the German towns I vigited no wrecks and no weeds. I, found no slums, no insanity hovel, from Frankfort to Dresden, from Munich to Berlin. And from the day of landing at Ostend to the day of embarkation from Hamburg I never set eyes on a. tramp. Arc the Germane angels, then? XSot a bit of it. They are own cousins to the English. But they are a bettergoverned, le&s-spoiled, and better-educa-ted people. In the beautiful hotel at which I stayed in Munich there lay upon the table in the hall a copy of a French paper", on the front page _of which appeared a picture of a Parisian apache a. French hooligan. In London such a picture would hardly have attracted my notice; in Germany it quite startled me. Why? Because I felt at once that in Germany but not in England an apache would be as impossible as a wolf. The Germans would make short work of such ruffians; they would hunt them out like rats. If need were, the Germans would send for a brigade of cavalry and chase the unholy brotherhood over the frontier or into prison. A gang of apaches m Berlin is a thing unthinkable. These desperadoes would all be learning the goosestep, or making roads, or pounding hemp in loss than a week. German omcials do not stand any nonsense. The German people respect the law and love order.

THE VALUE OF DISCIPLINE. And here is another fact which must not be overlooked in any explanation of the superior decency and sobriety of German life; nearly all the men of Germany are trained soldiers. This means very much more than an untrained British public can imagine. It means more than a universal drilling in military manoeuvres; it means that all the young men of Germany have been trained to habits of discipline and order. It means the inculcation of collective feelings, the founding of the civic spirit. It means that the German people arc a nation, not a congregation of antagonistic atoms. It means citizenship, and camararedrie, and decency, and manners. It means the startling, humiliating superiority of Berlin to London. Yes, Berlin is - the newest, cleanest, brightest city in Europe. It is also, I opine, the gayeet. How is it, then, that we hear so much of gay Paris and so little of Gay Berlin? I have never once heard Berlin spoken of a 6 a gay city. I have always had an impression—Heavens knows why—that Berlin was prim, and dull, and formal. But eit at a cafe in a Parisian boulevard and watch the faces of the crowd that drifts past like an endless river, and sit again at a cafe in a Berlin street and watch again. I will wager you shall see happier faces and a brighter, healthier life in the Prussian city than ih the_ French one. The German people enjoy : life: their officials and their rulers encourage them to enjoy life; they help them, to enjoy life; they take an interest in their lives and in their pleasures. The Germans love music; they love flowers: Berlin is full of flowers and music. _ The Germans love children; their children are washed, and dressed, and educated. The Germans are a "sociable, a gregarious people. Berlin is full of restaurants and cafes. There are many , fine cafes on the French plan, where one may sit outside, as in the boulevards, and observe one's fellow-creatures and take one's contentations contentedly in the eight of the whole city, and feel that one is not an oyster, but a human being.

A SOCIABLE PEOPLE. . And this reminds me of the bearing of the Germans towards each other. I have suggested '' that universal military training makes for manners. Be the cause what it may, the Germans are more courteous than the English. I do not think this courtesy is mere superficial polish; I think it is the unforced expression of a friendly" and sociable disposition. The Germans do not regard every stranger with suspicion, nor do they think it necessary to hide their natural selves behind an inflexible mask of oold reserve. If you enter a German cafe and look straight at a guest he will not resent your gaze. He will smile and bow. He is not at all surprised that another man should enter a public room where he is. He is not at all surprised that another likes lager beer and sausage; he likes lager beer and sausage" himself, and never pretends he does not. But go into an English restaurant and look an English guest in the face and smile, and he will freeze r your marrow with a "Saxon stare. Twenty years ago I was coming to London from Barnes. In our compartment:, first-class, were two well-dressed men. probably business men or professional men. Opposite to them sat an elderly gentleman in a shabby fur coat and a shabby silk hat. And he spoke to one of the well-dressed men about the scenery or the weather. And the man he spoke to stared him insolently in the face and gave him no answer. But when wo reached Waterloo there camo two tall flunkeys, in fur tippets and corded hats, to the door of our compartment, and one of them said to the shabby old gentleman, "Your grace, the carriage is here." Whereupon the two snobs turned thirteen different kinds of green and pink and purple; and I went on my way" rejoicing. The cads had snubbed a duke. On the other hand, a German business man under the like conditions would probably have sold the duke a piano or I a safety razor or a patent churn. ' i "Manners makyth man."