The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-13
LIKE IMPERIAL ROME

perfect known to histronic art. Shake- speare, by the way, is played more in Ber- lin than in any other city in the world. Besides the royal ones there are of course many other theatres and concert halls. Choice orchestral music may be heard whenever one wishes, and at ridiculously low prices. The public schools are ex- amples to the world, and the university numbers 12,000 students, many from Amer ica. The shops, hotels and cafes of Ber- lin do not strike the traveller as inferior to those of Paris.
 All of this manifold life goes on under police surveillance that is to us incon- oeivable. My family boarded during the year in three different quarters of the city, and every time we moved an inn mense blank had to be filled out with particulars of our history I had to write out my wife's maiden name. my mothers maiden name, my fathers name and oc- cupation, our ages, the birthplace of each or us, our income, and a number of other absurd trifies. These facts are all on permanent record in big books in three po- lice offices in Berlin. Once I was sent for
 
 precinct to fill in my wife's maiden name which had been accidentally omitted in one paper. A veritable army of officials in semi-miltary uniform who work very slowly, methodically and fussily, is em- ployed in the government bureaus in keeping these ponderous sets of books.
 At the head of the vast and complex military and civil machinery is Kaiser Wilhelm IT, the most complete potentate in the world. No man ever had. higher idea of the imperial office and no man ever came nearer to filling it's manifold requirements. To Americans the whole theory is ridiculous. But granted the the ory, one is astounded that any individual could come so near to realizing it. In the army in the navy in science, in art. in music, in Biblical criticism, in every part of religious, social, industrial and recreative life. the Kaiser makes his pa- triarchal personality effective. The won- der is that fin general he shows such ca- pacity for work, such practical wisdom, such moral wholesomeness, such mar velous versatility.
 But the picture which candor compels us to paint is not all bright This mili- tary glory, this luxurious material civil ization, this intoxication Of national pride. these sensuous delights of music and art are themselves the causes of some of the plague spots in Germany's social life Whenever there is an aristocracy of wealth there will be dreadful scandals shocking the moral sense of mankind We know that in our own New York and Pittsburg. All last year the Berlin papers were full of the terrible Harden case.
 The philosophic observer cannot feel that Germany has reached in any depart ment Of life healthy equilibrium. The immense and costly army, the instrument of Germany's rise, threatens economic and moral ruin. The officers are restless, arrogant, absolute. The poor working people. impatient under intolerable taxa ton, are fast going into socialism. The Kaiser has had for 20 years a difficult role to play, but until lately he has played 1t successfully. He saw from the first that Germany could not afford to fight another great war, but must maintain her army The question was how to keep the soldiers with their blood up and ready for action and how to keep the people quiet under the taxes His way has been to say something imprudent about once every six months and 50 fill Europe with a war scare. Thus he put himself into the center of the stage, excited and pleased the army and sienced the tax payers. But his last periodical indiscre- ton went wrong and like boomerang came back and struck the imperial pres tige such blow as 1t never before re- ceived. It was really the Harden scan- dals more than the London Dispatch in- terview that caused the profound revul- sion of German feeling. -1 Germany, the land of song and senti- ment, the land of fairy tales and social festivals. the land of mystic piety and encyclopedia learning, the land of pa- triotic sacrifice, will yet struggle away from sensualty and agnosticisn1, from militarsm and bureaucracy and despot- ism, into the larger light and truer lib- erty.