Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1913-09-17
HAS BEEN DOING GERMANY
A FOREIGN CORRESPOND EMIT
TELLS MANY THINGS
DIR. Porter Writes of Public Licensed
Lotteries and Ot.ser Under
World Custpms
Berlin. August ~.


BERLIN, August II.
FRIEND MuNsoN: 1t has rained every
day have been in this center of Ger
man life and have not seen German
life at its best. Today is Sunday and
we leave for Cologne. The races will
be checked if the rain keeps up There
are purses of u, 900 marks offered and
everybody who goes to the races bets
upon them. There are lotteries here
as in Norway and Sweden, ard here the
government looks after these question
able practices and regulates them in
stead of prohibiting them. Even the
women of the underworld are register
ed and are not frowned upon by the
people and are modest healthy look
ing lot whom the stranger could not
distinguish from other women. have
seen in five days, only one drunken fell
low, and he looked like an American stu
dent. Berlin is city of some 2, 900, 900
and one of the best governed cities on
earth. Burton Holmes says: Imperial
Berlin Is today the best governed of
all the worlds great cities; i is the
newest of the continental capitals, and
the cleanest. Berlin has solved success
fully many of the problems tina; are
now confronting all of the cities OF the
United States. We stop at Hotel Slsdt
kiel on Mittel Strasse, next street
to the Inter den Linden, a boulevard
100 feet wide, with two rows of trees,
q wide promenade between the streets
for travel. My room costs three marks
and the nice German breakfast little
more than another mark. Then we
strike an "Automat" for lunch; and
for dime or two get "nickle in the
/ slot" lunch. Those Automats are nice
and cheap. Put in your money, push
fpiug and down drops a sandwich, or
fruit or cup of milk or glass of beer or
postage stamp or trolly ticket.
The art galleries of Berlin do not
leave upon my mind the impression that
those of Munich, the Hague and Am
sterdam left, on the statuary galleries
of Copenhagen; but life in Berlin is
most interesting when you have good
guide, as | did, to point out the objects
of interest. Ii is surprising how cheap
/ ~ one lives here If he adopts the popu-
| lar plan, but there is althogether too
much swili used by the people, although
Germany is more temperate than Bel
GUM or Britain, Belgium using So gal
Ions, the United Kingdom 81 A gallons,
/ Germany rs, Denmark %, and the
United States 20 gallons malt liquors
| per capita, and Belgium, Germany and
| the United States use about 4 gallons
distilled spirits. Denmark gallons
and Britain one gallon per capita. But
these Germans are not the hogs to
1 swill down beer that our people are.
| They buy stein of beer and sit in a
restaurant and eat and smoke and read
and take an hour to drink the beer,
when an American would have drank
dozen glasses in that time.
GHENT, August 10. am waiting for
breakfast in this Belgian city and 20 TO
| the exposition here today. | rode from
Cologne to Brussels yesterday with an
American physician who, with his wife,
has studied year in Berlin. He looks
at the city from a medical mans view
and says IL is rotten. He has seen
hundred men and women of the UNDER
! world in one mornings clinic led before
the professor Of veneral diseases and
treated. He says these diseases are
/ terribly common notwithstanding regis
trati0n and frequent examinations. He
has seen about / 900 autCpsies; thou
sand dead Germans laid open and has
not seen normal healthy heart or kid
ney in them all. cat Berlin 200 quarts
of beer are drunk by each inhabitant
yearly; at Nuremberg 325 quarts, at
Frankfort 432, and at Munich $40
quarts. Is it any wonder that the
great German pathologist in Munich
found in 5000 post mortems as per cent
with "bier hertz" or enlarged fatty
hearts and livers?
| did the exposition in a day and
found good Belgian art gallery and
an excellent Belgian Congo exhibit.
This exhibit and the Livingston Cen
tennial exhibit in the Royal Museum at
Edinboro illustrate beautifully the work
of civilization in Africa. OF course
some of the Belgians have treated the
poor natives with fiendish cruelty but
the exhibit would lead one to believe
they are working for the betterment
of the native tribes of their Congo ter
ritories. 1t Is simply wonderful what
change has come over Central Africa
since David Livingston went there in
184l; and that great soul had more 20
do in bringing about the destruction of
the slave trade and the christianizing
of Africa than any other man.
The Edinburgh exhibit is loaned for
six months and now gees home to its
OWnsTe. 1t 10 shu UIoIdhe " uis-
pense with it. No exhibit ever in any
museum affected visitors in way this
does There is much to call out the
feelings of love and reverence toward
this great work; and so much of the
pathetic; his old Oxford bible 81 car
ried with me in all my wanderings in
Africa" his left arm bone, only eight
inches long, the lower half turned on
the upper half more than a quarter cir
Gle; and the letter TO DR.. Moffatt writ
ten after be had buried his wife in the
wilderness.
wind up this rambling letter in Lon
don. From my room ! can throw a
brick into the house where Dickens liv-
ed and wrote, on one side, and next
door but one on the other side Sydney
Smith lived. c. V. PORTER
IL Doughty st. August 81.