THE HUMAN GERMAN,*
Nov a few readers may be disposed to regard the title of this book as a contradiction in terms, in view of the dehumaniza- tion of the German people, and there is unfortunately only' too good excuse for such a view. But, to begin with, it should be noted that these pages are based entirely on anis-581E1m experiences, and, so far as we can judge, were written before the outbreak of the war. Furthermore, Mr. Edgeworth does not use the word "human" in the sense of humane; but rather as expressing the natural or real German. Lastly, his estimate, though founded on a long residence amongst and close study of the Germans, is restricted in its range to the middle-class urban and suburban population of Berlin. Had the book appeared ten years ago it would have appealed, by its minute and detailed information as to cost of living, &a., to English parents considering the rival attractions of various Continental centres as a temporary residence for educational purposes. As a practical hand- book it is now belated and useless, but the psychological interest remains, and is of high value. Mr. Edgeworth writes without any apparent animosity, and. has refrained, so far as we can see, from importing into his narrative any pose- bait= Comments. Indeed, to those who search its pages for direct evidences or foreshadowings of the temper which Germany has displayed since the outbreak of the war, the book will appear singularly lacking in intelligent anticipation. On a superficial survey of its contents one is chiefly impressed by the picture which it gives of the growth of luxury, gluttony, and grossness among the middle-class ; of the enormous and wasteful speculation on places of entertainment; of the cult of gross pleasures and self-indulgence ; and of the wide and indiscriminating assimilation of the worst features of cosmo- politan culture. As one reads these pages one is reminded of the old epigram on the late Roman Empire:— " Balnea, vine, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra; Sod vitani faciunt balnea, vine, Venus."
They afford a luminous commentary on the deterioration of private morality in urban Germany. They give no hint of the colossal energy, the national economies and the national unity displayed by the Germane since the war began. This may be explained to a considerable extent by the restricted area of Mr. Edgeworth's observations, but in any case it is to be taken in evidence of his honesty.
But when all allowances are made for the evidences which he has accumulated of the thirst for luxury on the one hand and the suffocating pedantry of bureaucratic tyranny on the other, the book affords abundant proof of the docility of the German people, and, by implication, of the sacrifices they are prepared to make in their bid for World Empire. After sur- veying the "humanity" of the Germans under a variety of aspects, Mr. Edgeworth concludes with a chapter on "The Human Kaiser," in which his services to the Empire are Tho Human German. Bq Edward Edieworth.. London: Mothuen and Co. [10s. Od. not.] summed up in the same spirit of dispassionate cynicism which pervades his studies of bureaucrats and professors, mis- tresses and servants, officers and shopkeepers, puritans and artists. According to the view expressed by a certain Dr. Gamradt, who acts throughout the book as a sort of interpreter of the intelligent middle-class, though the reign —up to 1812—was not liked, the Emperor is. He is man and human :— "These things, says Gamradt, are rare; dull Franz Josef is man and not human ; puny Victor Emmanuel is human and not man ; and so on. It is a boon to have a Sovereign who is brave, active, contentious, aspiring, universal. Wilhelm the Second, says Gamradt, is meritorious for one high reason. He is a foil to Germanism. Germany's plague is dull, full men, Wilhelm the Second is neither dull nor full; he is bright and shallowly all-knowing. Germany is plagued -with experts and specialists, who have studied it all their lives ; but Wilhelm the Second has not studied it at all, and his fullness of inspired error spurs dull men to motion."
He is disliked by Socialists and exacting Junkers, but popular with plain-thinking, middle reasonable men. He is, in short, the people's Kaiser, and his unpopularity is newspaper unpopularity—due in great measure to his position, obloquy in the Press being the price of autocracy. So far Dr. Gamradt, but Mr. Edgeworth adds a further touch :— "The Kaiser's prime virtues are his humanity and vanity. Ho is the Kaiser of the camera and the kinematograph ; the only two things on earth that show the real, that is, the projected subjective man, or the man as he is because ho wants to look so. The World. City every week sees a flickering, kinematograph Kaiser who has far more human substance than the solid, physical Kaiser. The physical, unreal Kaiser's virtues are hidden. The physical, un- real Kaiser tears daily down the Linden in a yellow motor-ear, heralded by apocalyptic trumping, which to other motorists is forbidden. He looks cross, Kaiserly, unhuman, unreal. The Kaiser, made known to Germans by Kino-culture, is a sub- stantial human reality; and he lays siege successfully to every susceptible heart."
The Kino-Kaiser, affable, chivalrous, slaying boars, roaring with laughter, "is rightly sought by foreigners, and Americans more than any fall beneath the spell."
Finally, Mr. Edgeworth gives us the "native and human" picture of the Kaiser drawn by Herr Dr. Jur.
Mahlstepf, a prosperous, cultivated lawyer, who belongs to the Radical but monarchical People's Party. When Socialist grumblers complain that in his zeal to preach the Gospel of everything he treads on all men's toes, he retorts that this is an indispensable element in German progress, "because only by making people uncomfortable can you stir them up." The only plausible explanation of the secular problem why Satan is allowed to pester mankind is to be found in the Prologue to Faust—viz., that His Sulphurity stirs supine mankind into fruitful hustling. That is the justification of the Kaiser. He is the Imperial antidote to bureaucratic tutelage :— "What with all this State and all this City peddling and meddling, nothing at all is left to the unit, the Man. Therefore life has grown shallow, unheroic, effete, ineffective, and dull. We are dehumanized. We have excised even the saving element of risk, the animating gamble with Fate. We are insured against every ill from Death to German measles. . . ." And English- Sickness—as we call rickets,' put in Dr. Lauwein. Dr. Miihlstepf looked at him derisively, and continued : 'In this crisis of culture intervenes our Emperor Wilhelm—intervenes to save us from entire moral dissolution by infusing into our blood the missing corpuscles of contentiousness, of polemics, of provocation. Of course he snakes us swear. But he makes us think—that's the gain. And the fruits are ripening—I see them, though thin fruits so far. He laughed at our Secessionist daubers—now they give no cause to laugh. Ho called our dishevelled journalists hunger-candidates —since then they've taken to the regenerative hair-brush ; his vary Daily Telegraph. blunder brought us a dozen Dreadnoughts. 'He said he was Guardian of Islam,' interrupted Dr. Med. Lanwein, and his own friends seized Tripoli." That's true. He's not infallible. A people with the Erfurt Programme can dispense with infallibility. We want an irritant and a stimulant We Germans talk a great deal about World-Things—about World- Policy and World-Trade and the World-Spirit, and we have a whole literature imaging World-Pain—der Weltsehmere. Other nations have these too. But there is one thing which we only have given to humanity—that is the World-Stimulant—das Weltreismitta Wilhelm the Second is the World-Stimulant.' ..."
We have little doubt that this picture of the Kaiser exercising a function on his subjects comparable to that which the cat- fish exercises on the cod represents accurately enough the views of his friendly critics two years ago. They are already beginning to realize how costly is the privilege of being ruled by a World-Stimulant.
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