Germans

“ The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the official clerk, the representative in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment should be confused with, what all Germans love, and what it has cost them blood and tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the nations, the German Fatherland! ”

“ What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. ”

“ By a curious fatality Germany has become the centre of this great war and world-movement, which is undoubtedly destined—as the Germans themselves think, though in a way quite other than they think—to be of vast importance, and the beginning of a new era in human evolution. ”

“ And still there are men in America who despair of the vitality of the Germans, of their indomitable power to resist oppression, of their love of freedom, and of their devotion to it, proved by a glorious history of two thousand years. The German race is a power, the vitality and influence of which you can trace through the world's history for two thousand years; you can trace it through the history of science and heroism, of industry, and of bold enterprizing spirit. ”

“ Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period—one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. ”

“ When the Germans lie on their arms, looking across the Alsatian frontier at the crowds of Frenchmen rushing to applaud L’ami Fritz at the Theatre Francais, looking and considering the meaning of that applause, which is grimly comic in its political response to the domestic moral of the play—when the Germans watch and are silent, their force of character tells. They are kings in music, we may say princes in poetry, good speculators in philosophy, and our leaders in scholarship. ”

“ It is they whom we must thank—we, the immediate heirs of their soil, their language, and their way of thinking—for being Germans still, for being still borne along on the stream of original and independent life. ”

“ Although we have had few opportunities of seeing the better class of Germans in their homes, we know that home-life is sweet and sacred to them, and the Germans are everywhere proverbially honest and their word to be depended upon. ”

“ Celtic tales of the migrations westward which brought them into their European seats are but lying legends, mere echoes of their later knowledge of the countries and nations to the eastward. Germany is, from the first, the home of the Germans: they are a seething mass; south-eastward as well as southwestward rove their restless hordes, disturbing for centuries the peace of the civilized world ”

“ Now, we know what the German men are. These women are the mothers and wives and sisters of the German men; in other words, they are Germans, body, and bone and brain-cells, capable of precisely the same ruthless tactics when pushed too hard—if they have a leader. ”

“ But the Germans are canaille—alas! they are so good-natured! A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans: the German places every one on an equal footing. With the [Pg 129] exception of my intercourse with one or two artists, and above all with Richard Wagner, I cannot say that I have spent one pleasant hour with Germans. Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest spirit of all ages were to appear among Germans, then one of the saviours of the Capitol would be sure to arise and declare that his own ugly soul was just as great. ”

“ What, for instance, is to be the status of Germans visiting or residing in other countries—seeking to trade with them—to borrow money from them—to interchange with them the civilities of ordinary life, or those more solemn courtesies which are practised by societies of learning and letters? ”

“ Go out on the highway to Berlin or Vienna or any of the great roads and you will seldom meet any Germans touring in their motors for pleasure. Only Americans—English. The Germans are spoiling little time by such matters. They are busy—busy working for their Empire—busy like moles boring away to undermine the earth—busy drilling with arms. ”

“ The Germans form one of the most important branches of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan race—a division of the human family which also includes the Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and the Slavonic tribes. ”

“ And as to learning any new method of performing a given task, be it even the dressing of a dish for dinner, I question whether you could prevail upon him to attempt that by any influence short of positive compulsion. Yet in war the Germans are an enterprising people, and among the arts of peace they can boast, with truth, that some of the most important discoveries ever effected were effected by their countrymen. ”

“ I prefer to trust to the former.
The Germans are a big, square-shouldered, deep-chested race. They do not talk much, but look as though they thought. Like all big things, they are easy-going and good-tempered. ”

“ But not only the Slavs, the French and other nations also were—according to these theorists—formed by the Germans, just as even Christ Himself was of German origin. In a word, the whole world is and must be German. ”

“ The Deutschtum is sacred to the Germans. One cannot but have the deepest respect for the pride of Germans in their ancestry, in their language, in their church, and in the preservation of traditional customs. ”

“ It is only fair to say, also, that our admiration of Germany's achievements in art, literature, and science never led us so far as to accept the claim of superiority in these lines advanced by many Germans on behalf of their country. ”

“ In power of endurance the Germans are surpassed by the Slavic race, in agility by the Latin. The prominent features of the German national character are honesty, faithfulness, valor, thoughtfulness, perseverance, and industry. ”

“ Those that appreciate the real significance of the European struggle realize that it is due to the imperialistic tendencies of the German race. Germans look upon themselves as a race of lords—Herrenfolk—a chosen people destined to rule the world and incidentally to confer upon the weaker races the benefits of German kultur. ”

“ But do you know I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur! And why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans who have put this war on to us. ”

“ The Germans, although a visionary and enthusiastic people, had nevertheless too much common sense to embrace such glaring absurdities. He met with so little success in his own country, that, after nearly twenty years spent in writing, and teaching, he had made but meagre progress, and found himself surrounded only by a handful of followers. ”

“ The fact that the Germans, for a whole century, have devoted themselves more particularly to the study of history, only tends to prove that they are the stemming, retarding, and becalming force in the activity of modern society—a circumstance which some, of course, will place to their credit. ”

“ The Germans have written volumes on his genius and works, and pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. They cannot believe but that he must have been in Germany, to represent so completely their feelings and philosophies ”

“ The Germans, so conceited about their special worth, erect upon distant ground their intellectual monuments, borrowing of the foreigner their foundation material whenever they undertake a new line of work. ”

“ These earliest Germans, having neither speech nor habits in common with their neighbours, developed a self-sustained and independent community wholly different and set off from those of others around them and to this day their locality measurably carries on its distinctive life. ”

“ They are no less proud of having expounded to modern Europe for the first time through the immortal Copernicus a correct notion of the world we live in and the worlds around us. The Germans as pioneers of modern civilization.The contributions of the German race to modern civilization and modern thought are thus of a very high order,—and if we can believe patriotic German historians, modern civilization and modern history are German civilization and German history! ”

“ The main thing, however, to be noted both about Germany and the German Emperor is what they stand for in the movement of world-ideas at the present time. Germans cause foreigners to smile when they prophesy that their culture, their civilization, will become the culture and the civilization of the world. ”

“ To such peoples the Germans belong without a doubt; and this trait is so deeply marked in their whole life in the world, both past and present, that very often, in order to be just both to contemporary foreign countries and to antiquity, they have been unjust to themselves. ”

“ The Germans, at least, would be blessed in any heaven where fair skies and hills and forests and streams would lie before their gaze. However inadequate their other qualifications for Elysium may be, they excel us by far in this respect. ”

“ The proud boast of the Pan-Germans that it is the destiny of the German race to rule the world would appear to be correct, were it not for a singular phenomenon which, so far, has remained almost unobserved. ”

“ They are remarkable for the tenacity of their adherence to ancient habits and customs, which may, perhaps, account for their still being a distinct people among the Germans by whom they are surrounded. And they are not less remarkable for honesty, health, and an amount of agricultural skill, which distinguishes them from their neighbours. ”

“ Those who come after you will accustom themselves to other ideas, will adopt alien forms and another way of conducting life and affairs; and how long will it be then before there is no one living who has seen or heard of Germans? ”

“ Now it is generally admitted that Germans, Anglo-Saxons and men descended from these nationalities, in one word, German thought, led the van of progress in science, literature and religious thought, during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in fact has continued to do so up to the present time. ”

“ Few Germans, perhaps few men of any modern nation, have a proper sense of an æsthetic whole:—they praise and blame by passages; they are charmed by passages; and who has greater reason to rejoice at this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piece-work matter?" ”

“ the French know what they want: it is to skin those German sausages, but the Germans must sing another song; ”

“ The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. ”

“ By means of the new education we want to mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest. ”

“ We have moved! The way the Huns are going backwards, my next letter should be headed “Somewhere in Germany.” This move has been one for the better in regard to quarters. The Germans didn’t do much hating in this village. No doubt they didn’t have time. At any rate the houses are standing on their own feet and the roofs are pretty much all together.
11 12Germany is down and out. Everywhere you notice and see it. The French are rubbing the defeat in. Before this wonderful drive you never saw a light anywhere. Now everywhere you see them. Autos go by with their head lights thumbing their noses. ”

“ But it was composed of Germans, familiar with the name and grades of German nobility and rigorous advocates of its privileges. By what arts or by what chance did our young adventurer succeed in persuading them that he was a nobleman? How, too, did he, in six short years, succeed in transforming the obsequious butler into the proud baron? That he did thus pass from a peasant to a noble, and put on, as though they had been his birthright, the air and bearing of nobility, is a fact which Mr. ”

“ I was at the same time impressed with the falsity of the general idea that Frenchmen are excitable and emotional, and that Germans are calm and phlegmatic. Frenchmen are merely gay and never overwhelmed by their emotions. When they talk loud and fast, it is merely talk, while Germans get worked up and red in the face when sustaining an opinion, and in heated discussions are likely to allow their emotions to sweep them off their feet. ”

“ With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people. ”

“ Germans against Germans.Nevertheless the defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans. ”

“ The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. ”

“ (The Germans invented gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again made things square—they invented printing.) ”