domain; but the magnitude of the advance in these other lines is in some degree a matter of estimate and opinion, which may in that degree be influenced by sentiments of self-complacency or of depreciation, whereas the gains in the material respect spoken for above are beyond cavil. But judged by these physically measurable marks of excellence, the historical period within which this modern onset of the German people runs will have to be dated somewhat back of the French-Prussian war. In each of the three respects named the advance was well under way before that date. It is, however, safe to say that this beginning of the current era falls within the second quarter of the nineteenth century.16 It is also safe to say that the prime mover among these factors of the nation’s unfolding power has been its increased industrial efficiency, rather than either of the other two. While their increasing efficiency has doubtless been conditioned by the growth in population, the initiative, as between these two, has doubtless vested in the former rather than in the latter. In the correlation between industrial advance and population the primacy belongs to the former. The like is true, of course, as regards the growth in military strength.
Also, doubtless, a large place among the causes of growth and efficiency is believed to be due to a wise governmental policy and a shrewd administration, but opinion counts for much in the appraisal of this governmental policy, and opinion on such a matter is liable to partiality, for or against. The unfolding of warlike power has unequivocally been a work of governmental policy, and the same policy has unquestionably sought to further the industrial advance; the question that presents itself in the latter connection is not as to the faithful intentions and endeavor of the government - or “State,” to use the German concept - but only as to the probable degree of efficacy of these good intentions and endeavor; and on this head opinions will not coincide, and the proposition will therefore best be left out of the premises.
As is well known, the practical movement for German union, which came to a successful issue in the eventual formation of the Empire, owed its beginnings and its earlier success to the economic needs of the German countries, - or it may be said to have been provoked by the grievous burden of artificial evils created by the governments of the small states among which the country was divided. So, as a practical measure, it begins with the formation of a Tariff Union, designed to remove certain of the obstacles which the particularist policies of these states had erected. And this union and uniformity of economic policy within the Empire is still one of the chief assets of its strength, particularly the absence of internal tariff restrictions.
The place and relation of Germany to the industrial development of modern Europe, therefore, will necessarily be the point of departure for any inquiry into the fortunes and achievements of the German people in this modern era. On this head, then, its natural resources available for modern industrial use are of the same kind and range as those found in the neighboring countries; there is substantially nothing to distinguish the German lands from those of north Europe at large, unless it be that the resources of the country are slightly under grade in quality and slightly scant in quantity, at least as compared with the most fortunate of the neighboring countries. Again, in point of native proclivity and aptitude the German population is virtually identical with its neighbors. In respect of hereditary endowment - racial character - it is the same people as the population of the neighboring nations, - more particularly identical with the Dutch, Belgian and British. By virtue of its hybrid extraction it is, like these others, gifted with a large capacity for acquiring and turning to account a wide range of technological knowledge; and by virtue of the same hereditary bias of workmanship that animates these others it is, like its neighbors, assiduously and sagaciously addicted to industry and thrift. What chiefly distinguishes the German people from these others in this connection, and more particularly from the British, is that the Germans are new to this industrial system; and the distinctive traits of the German case are in the main traceable to this fact that they are still in their novitiate.
When the current era in the life-history of the German people began, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Germany was far in arrears, as compared with its neighbors to the west, but more particularly as contrasted with the British. This is historical commonplace, of course. It may be taken with such allowance and qualification as may seem needful; the main fact remains, that in certain decisive, or at least substantial, respects Germany was in an anachronistic state, particularly as seen from the station occupied by the English-speaking peoples.
There is no call to depreciate the merits of the German culture of that time in those respects in which it excelled, as there would also be no use in attempting an undervaluation of it; it is too large a fact in the heritage of mankind to suffer seriously from an assault of words. However, those genial respects in which the civilisation characteristic of Germany excelled, - in which, indeed, Germany triumphed, - were not in the line of efficiency that counted materially toward fitness for life under the scheme of things then taking shape in Europe. It may have been better or it may have been worse than what came to take its place, but in any case it was not an articulate part of the working scheme; as is proven in the sequel, which was worked out with only negligible contributions from the accumulated wisdom of the German people.
Germany was in arrears in the industrial arts and in its political institutions, as well as in such features of its civil and domestic scheme of life as come intimately into correlation with, or under the dominant influence of, these fundamental agencies in the scheme of institutions. This is the visible difference between the case of the German and of the British peoples at the time, apart from superficial peculiarities of usage and the idly decorative elements of culture. In industrial matters Germany was still at the handicraft stage, with all that is implied in that description in the way of institutional impedimenta and meticulous standardisation of trifles. Measured by the rate of progression that had brought the English community to the point where it then stood, the German industrial system was some two and a half or three centuries in arrears - somewhere in Elizabethan times; its political system was even more archaic; and use and wont governing social relations in detail was of a character such as this economic and political situation would necessarily foster.
The characterisation so offered applies to the industrial organisation as a balanced and comprehensive working system. It does not overlook the fact that many alien details had been intruded into this archaic system by force of Germany’s unavoidable contact with the more modern industrial communities of western Europe. But it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the alien elements seriously began to derange the framework of the archaic scheme.
Politically much the same will hold, except that fewer modernisms had found their way over the frontiers in this domain, nor had such modernisms effected an equally secure and disturbing lodgment in the tissues of the body politic, Germany being still consistently organised on the pattern of the “territorial State,” - a peculiarly petty and peculiarly irresponsible autocracy, which has come to its best maturity only among the Germanic peoples, and which has held its place with remarkable tenacity within the limits of the Fatherland.
The territorial State, or its less finished replica under another designation, has not been unknown elsewhere in the north-European country, but it passed out by obsolescence some time ago among the other north-European peoples; so that even the Scandinavian countries, which would appear by geographical necessity to have been designed for petty things, had lost this archaic fashion of state policy and political control by the time when the question of its supersession began to attract an (ineffectual) speculative interest in Germany. The territorial State is in effect a territorial aggregate, with its population, conceived as an estate belonging in usufruct to a given prince; the concept is visibly of feudal derivation, and the habit of mind which makes it a practicable form of political organisation is the feudal habit of personal subservience to a personal master. In such a polity subordination, personal allegiance, is the prime virtue, the chief condition precedent to its carrying on; while insubordination is the fatal vice, incompatible with such a coercive system.
As seen from the standpoint of the political interests in such a State, the spirit of abnegation is by apologetic euphemism spoken of as “duty,” while insubordination is called “contumacy.” The
