with observances, celebrations, cannon, kings. In no other country is
there more than one king. In ours we find three and an emperor
necessary. The savage who fears all things does not fear more than we
Germans. We fear other nations, we fear other people, we fear public
opinion to an extent incredible, and tremble before the opinion of our
servants and tradespeople; we fear our own manners and therefore are
obliged to preserve the idiotic practice of duelling, in which as often
as not the man whose honour is being satisfied is the one who is
killed; we fear all those above us, of whom there are invariably a
great many; we fear all officials, and our country drips with
officials. The only person we do not fear is God."


"But--" I began, remembering their motto, bestowed on them by Bismarck,


"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted. "It is not, however, true. The
contrary is the truth. We Germans fear not God, but everything else in
the world. It is only fear that makes us polite, fear of the duel;
for, like the child and the savage, we have not had time to acquire the
habit of good manners, the habit which makes manners inevitable and
invariable, and it is not natural to us to be polite. We are polite
only by the force of fear. Consequently--for all men must have their
relaxations--whenever we meet the weak, the beneath us, the momentarily
helpless, we are brutal. It is an immense relief to be for a moment
natural. Every German welcomes even the smallest opportunity."


You would be greatly interested in Kloster, I'm certain. He sits
there, his fiddle on his fat little knees, his bow punctuating his