Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-11-26
MAKING" OF BERLIN
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
"KAIsER's CAPITAL"

From the London Chronicle.
Was Berlin made last year-or the year
before? It Is impossible to say from look
ing at it. Some of the trees In the streets
look at least ten years old, but they must
have been planted long before the city
was thought of-the houses and the streets
and the lampposts and the statues are
all much too neat and new to nave en-
dured the rains of more than one winter
1t is all in fact quite too new to De COM
Portable One feels afraid to steep IN any
of the houses lest rheumatism shouid DC
living in wait in rooms where the plaster
has not had time to harden. drove
from the station in 'droshki with
monstrously old horse. Time haa oehs
bis forelegs into a very good imitation OF
a switchback raiway-and as we pioduegu
solemnly along the brand new asphdll
roadway, with the brand new houses on
either side, and an occasional pralo new
electric car, with praila new new wv ,nyseIr
a brand new uniform | found myseii
wondering what that old horse must thinh
of If ALL One day he may nave peen
grazing in an open field-and when ne
passed that way a week or SO iater ne
Found a new broad boulevard with hotels,
ard shops and churches, and great DOCKS
of flats all sprung up IKE mushrooms,
Can it have been the shock whlch safe
those curious contours to ms ioreless.
Therefore / think he must have been the
aIdast crest,1re in Berlin. Perhaps his
driver was right to value mis- services d.
such a high rate, though did not reah-e
1t at the time
No Grace or Spontaneity.
Berlin. then. is a great deal too perfect
TO be satisfactory. 1t is the machine
n,oaa not the handmade article-it was
very decidedly made, not born. There Is
no spontaneity in it. no life; compared TO-
say. London 1t is like beautiful marble
statue to a living woman. Possibly the
statue Is the more beautiful of the two
to look at-but even Pygmalion prayed
that his Galatea might be turned into
woman before he could think of marrying
her It is impossible to believe that any
one really lives in Berlin. There are in
habitants-2, 100000 or so-but their reaI
homes must be somewhere else, and they
only camp out in Berlin, at so much
week to oblige the kaiser. ! suppose ne
takes 1t all seriously. and looks out OF his
big ugly palace at the hideous new cathe-
dral over the way, and peers down ,ne
he sees some people walking up and down
and congratulates himself on having
real capital. And as he drives on to un-
the new Sieges Alice, his subjects take
off their new hats very seriously. and
try to look like real Berlners as hard as
they can. But all the while they are
because they know what huge joke it all
is. I think even the kaiser must have
some idea of it. This would account for
his prodigious love of travel. which takes
him 70 every other capital In Europe in
order to see what it IL that makes them
so real.
A Big Village.
Berlin Is In fact. an awful object lesson
to emperors and others to try to make a
capital city out of a respectable village. 1t
is easy to put up imposing buildings-f you
have the money--and to cut out broad tree
lined roads, and have everything neat and
nice and ane-but you only make your VII
lage bigger and finer without making II any
the more capital city. There is no get
ting away from the feeling that Berlin IL
a village big Villages beautiful, rectilin-
ear, new-out-of-t he-band- village. but a
village all the same. And its inhabitants are
all yiIlagers-their very clothes speak OF the |
are nothing Il not provin- |
cial. They and their clothes. and the
streets and the houses they live in are all |
much too rectangular. II the kaiser had
really wanted to deceiye his yisitors into