Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1885-01-30
Germ an Socialism.

1
We confess that nothing in Europe excites
in US such a sensation of dismay as the atti-
tude of the party of action among German
Socialists. We have been accustomed to the
French tendency to bursts Of irrational fury,
| and have learned to explain it by abusing
| the NATIONAL character and the tendency to
believe in ideas and the deep ignorance of
the body of the French people. A Partisan
who is suffering is somehow expected to
| enunciate some radically unsound PROPOSE
| ton and to die fighting for it. His superb
ors do it too and the French workman is no
more wrong headed than Fourier OF St. Si-
mon or CADET. But the Germans are sup
posed to be at least as grave as the Scotch,
at least as sensible as the English, and much
better educated. They have all been taught
all been drilled, all been accustomed to obey
the law. They make excellent emigrants;
they so thrifty that Englishmen cannot
contend with them; and if they are not quite
so good as they claim to be-indeed, mortal
man could hardly be that-the domestic vir-
tues have over the ma aiority decided hold.
Nevertheless, whenever they suffer, they re-
sent their suffering with savageness and a
want of reason which exceeds that of almost
any people in Europe. They adduce their
poverty as proof that atheism must be well
founded, they look or profess to look on an
archy as a source of relief, and they resort to
personal violence with faith which to Eng
lishmen seems almost inexplicable. 1t is not
the emperor alone who is in danger, though
even that shows a people imbued with the
old folly that government is responsible for
all woes The urban landlords are also in
danger, the people actually not seeing that If
by threatening they can reduce rents, they
will also stop competition in building houses.
o15 IL linz
capital, for making the State sole landlord,
for intrusting the control of all labor to the
Communes, are as wild those of the wild
est French communists, and in the clrcum-
stances of their country even less practical.
They should be the most sensible of man
kind, yet the moment the hunger for COM
fort attacks them it seems to become pas
sion disturbing to the judgment, and provo
king acts which, apart from their immorali-
ty, are as practical measures taken with de
fined end simply senseless. It may be said
that they suffer much, and that IS perfectly
true; probably no people suffer more, for be-
sides their poverty they have to endure Sc
vereIy repressive State system, an ungenial
climate, and that sense of contrast between
the actual and the desired, which is every
where the heaviest cross in the lot of the
educated poor; but if men like the Ger
mans lose their heads because of poverty,
what hope is there for the future? The
great HaJorlty LII au oIu county WhoIo
competition is not kept down by the pow
er of acquiring fertile land must always be
poor, always liable to seasons of severe
pressure, always be called upon for more
work than it is at all pleasant to perform.
That is, in Europe at all events, the doom
of mankind; and though it may be allevia-
ted by emigration, by wiser culture, by
the abolition of all restrictions on COM
merce, and possibly by scientific combina-
ton, it can never be seriously affected by
methods of government. The German re-
public may be freer and better, and more
educative than the German monarchy, but
it can grow no more corn.