Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/143

Rh means a great deal from the point of view of this discussion. In modern times the greatest loss of Germany has been not from war, but from emigration. If the men who have left Germany are of higher type than those who remain at home, then the blood of the nation is impoverished. That this is the case the Germans in Germany are usually not willing to admit. On the other hand, those competent to judge the German-American find no type of men in the Old World his mental or physical superior.

The tendency of emigration, whether to cities or to other countries, is to weaken the rural population. An illustration of the results of checking this form of selection is seen in the Bavarian town of Oberammergau. This little village, with a population not exceeding fifteen hundred, has a surprisingly large number of men possessing talent, mental and physical qualities far above the average even in Germany. The cause of this lies in the Passion Play, for which for nearly three centuries Oberammergau has been noted. The best intellects and the noblest talents that arise in the town find full scope for their exercise in this play. Those who are idle, vicious or stupid are excluded from it. Thus, in the long run, the operation of selection is to retain those whom the play can use and to exclude all others. To weigh the force of this selected heredity we have only to compare the quality of Oberammergau with that of other Bavarian towns, as, for example, her sister village of Unterammergau, some two miles lower down, in the same valley.

XXXIV. Switzerland is the land of freedom—the land of peace. But in earlier times some of the thrifty cantons sent forth their men as hireling soldiers to serve for pay under the flag of whomsoever might pay their cost. There was once a proverb in the French Court, 'pas d'argent; pas de Suisses,' no money; no Swiss, for the agents of the free republic drove a close bargain.

In Luzerne stands one of the noblest monuments in all the world, the memorial of the Swiss guard of Louis XVI., killed by the mob at the palace of Versailles. It is carved in the solid rock of a vertical cliff above a great spring in the outskirts of the city. A lion of heroic size, a spear thrust through its body, guarding in its dying paws the Bourbon lilies and the shield of France. And the traveler, Carlyle tells us, should visit Luzerne and her monument, "Not for Thorwaldsen's sake alone, but for the sake of the German Biederkeit and Tapferkeit, the valor which is worth and truth, be it Saxon, be it Swiss."

Beneath the lion are the names of those whose devotion it commemorates. And with the thought of their courage comes the thought of the pity of it, the waste of brave life in a world that has none too much. It may be fancy, but it seems to me that as I go about in Switzerland I can distinguish by the character of the men who remain those