Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/156

152. The three duties of the citizen, "Soldat sein; Steuer; Mund halten" (be a soldier; pay taxes; hold your tongue), are simple and do not encourage initiative. Universal conscription binds the individual into subjection to the central power. He has the choice between docile acceptance of a fate not wholly intolerable, and revolt with probable misery or death. Forms of insurance against poverty, unemployment or old age guard him against total failure. The difficulties which beset the common man in trying to enter the "learned proletariat" of the universities or the sublimated caste of the army deter all but the most gifted from ambition for advancement. Only real genius for scholarship or for money-getting can break the bonds of caste. This system minimizes the miseries of poverty, while at the same time it checks initiative in the mass of the people.

In general, it subordinates individual freedom to a prearranged discipline of efficiency. This has culminated in the development of the army and navy. To those who regard the dominance of militarism as a survival of savagery, the recrudescence of military ideals in Germany seems one of the saddest results of modern scientific advance.

The victory over France in 1871 has had the effect of intensifying the military spirit of Germany, and of making its extension appear an integral part of the nation's commercial and industrial growth. This fact operates toward final disaster, for whether successful or not in the struggle with the allied powers, the aggregate result will be of the nature of terrible defeat. When the record is summed up it may appear that Germany rather than France is the final sufferer from the Franco-Prussian war and the "blood and iron" policy of Bismarck and his successors.

In England, before the Great War, one often heard complaints of the decadence of the nation. This is a habit of the British press in the summer months in the intervals between sensations. The yeomanry were disappearing. The slums of London, Manchester, Liverpool were centers of sweat-shops and child labor, of wasting overwork, of infant mortality, and malnutrition, of sodden drunkenness and helpless old age. And in the higher classes, we were told of "flannelled oafs" and heedless sportsmen, men to whom a cricket match was of more worth than the conservation of empire. Much of this complaint was complacent self-criticism, a favorite amusement with the wealthy unemployed of England. Some of it had the political purpose of discrediting the government, but behind it all rests a certain neglected residuum of truth.

Great Britain has accomplished much in the last century, and much