doing in New York for a short time. But the inevitable followed. The
German people have been reduced to a very low level of political
ability.

The German is one of the poorest politicians in the world, as every
student of political science knows. His lack of ability to run a
government on constitutional principles has been found in the inane
vaporings and factional maneuvering of the Reichstag, the supposedly
"popular" House of the Parliament, which was merely a machine to
register the will of the aristocratic autocracy. The individual citizen
is the most servile and unthinking person in any civilized country of
the world to-day. He has been trained to political incapacity.

What has the success of German Socialism amounted to? We find that
Germany, from the political standpoint, is nothing but an organized
machine without soul. Professor Ely, in taking the Moral side of the
matter into consideration, well says that "it may be added that truth,
an attribute of the gentleman, is less valued in Germany than in English
speaking countries. As long ago as 1874 Professor James Morgan Hart in
his book _German Universities_ called attention to this weakness in the
German character. A German mother will say to her child, 'O, you little
liar,' and does not imply serious reprobation thereby, and Professor
Hart said that if you called a German student a liar, he might take it
calmly, but if you called him a blockhead, he would challenge you to
fight a duel. All this has been amply exemplified during the present
war. It was the German socialist Lassalle who said of the lie that it
was one of the great European Powers! It was natural enough that he
should have said it."[7]

The public preparatory schools in Germany are so arranged that the