CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN
 
 BOOKS BY 
 GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK 
 
 NINEVEH, AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 A GAME AT LOVE, AND OTHER 
 PLAYS 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE 
 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A 
 BARBARIAN 
 
 By 
 
 GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 1910
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Published April, iqio
 
 FROM 
 THE AUTHOR OF THIS 
 
 TO 
 THE AUTHOR OF HIS EXISTENCE 
 
 Jf ran? <eors Cttotn Houte OTitfjolb ^Ji 
 
 WHO 
 
 WHATEVER HE MAY THINK OF THEM 
 INSPIRED THESE PAGES
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book reveals America to herself by inter 
 preting Europe. I stand in symbolic relation, so 
 to speak, to both hemispheres. My twofold racial 
 consciousness serving as a fulcrum, I am enabled 
 to pry two worlds Archimedes aspired to lift but 
 one out of the furrow of their mutual miscon 
 ception. 
 
 I have seen the soul of the subtle siren Europe. 
 I have chronicled facts from her unwritten history, 
 from the secret pages of diplomatic portfolios. 
 From her have I also learned verities greater than 
 facts. I may speak ex cathedra: infallibility I 
 claim not. I have emulated not the labored mi 
 nuteness of old school painters who, numbering 
 each hair of the head, make themselves rivals of 
 God, but the thumbnail sketches of Whistler and 
 the chromatic riots of Boecklin. 
 
 My book, though published serially in William 
 Marion Reedy's brave weekly, The Mirror, is 
 journalism only in the sense in which that term 
 may also be applied to the Relsebilder of Heine. 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 If the dramatic poet may fashion himself to the 
 exigencies of the stage, shall not literature disguise 
 itself unreproved in the cloak of news? Only 
 those are of all time who, like Rabelais, Cervan 
 tes, and Voltaire, are in immediate touch with their 
 own time. 
 
 Having navigated unknown seas of Germanic 
 psychology, I chart them. I trace the tangled 
 lines of an elder civilization. I record spiritual 
 data that elude Baedeker. The guileless Amer 
 ican mind rebels against certain peculiarities in the 
 culture of Europe. I have dived through troubled 
 waters as one dives for the pearl, to discover their 
 hidden meanings, the wisdom encrusted in all 
 things ancient. 
 
 I urge Europe's gospel of tolerance. I lead 
 those who follow me out of the Babylonian cap 
 tivity of Puritan prejudice. I have been accused 
 of posing, because, in a world of antinomies, I am 
 an inveterate truth-teller. This is my flesh and 
 blood. I could not more frankly denude myself 
 in the sanctity of the Confessional. I speak with 
 the truthfulness of Saint Augustine, of Rousseau, 
 and of George Moore. 
 
 GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE OLD WORLD LURE .... I 
 
 II. FIRST SHOCKS 9 
 
 III. THE STATE IDEA 24 
 
 IV. " S. M." 37 
 
 V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM . 51 
 
 VI. INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY ... 63 
 
 VII. THE MORALS OF EUROPE ... 74 
 
 VIII. ADAM AND EVE 85 
 
 IX. SOME WOMEN 97 
 
 X. INTELLECTUAL DRAMA . . H5 
 
 XL THINGS LITERARY .... 132 
 
 XII. THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN ... 149 
 
 XIII. GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS . . . 166 
 
 XIV. WE AND EUROPE 177 
 
 XV. I AND AMERICA . 196
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE OLD WORLD LURE 
 
 I HAVE no intention of rivaling Baedeker. I 
 met him abroad. He is an excellent man, the 
 distinguished son of a distinguished father high 
 priests of travel both. Far be it from me to take 
 the bread from his mouth. 
 
 It gave me a curious feeling to meet Baedeker. 
 It was almost like meeting the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica. I had always thought of him as a little 
 red book, not as a man. I don't remember what 
 we said. Probably it was of no special significance. 
 
 One speaks of sins of omission. Why not of 
 virtues? Besides, I am not a vender of useful 
 information. I don't like scenery. I detest things. 
 And of geography I have a positive horror. The 
 distinguished Harvard professor was not far from 
 right when he said I was more interested in myself 
 than in Europe. 
 
 I am an inveterate individualist. Men and ideas 
 are to me the only realities. Even we human 
 beings are but ideas incarnate, particles mys-
 
 2 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 terious and vibrant of the great world-brain. Per 
 haps, as Heine suggests, life is only the fevered 
 dream of some malevolent demon? 
 
 We are not theologians, however. Without in 
 quiring into primary causes, we ponder with 
 changing emotions the prism of the world. Of its 
 multiple aspects some to us are exciting and novel. 
 We respond less readily to stimuli already fa 
 miliar. To the weary eyes of the gods all things 
 are hued with indifference. I shall depict the ex 
 ceptional from an exceptional visual angle. 
 
 I admit I am very unjust, and surely mislead 
 ing. The grotesque piques my curiosity. I over 
 emphasize sex. Nevertheless, I am truthful. I 
 practice all the Christian virtues, without faith in 
 any. If my impressions are colored they are 
 there is always Baedeker to fall back upon. There 
 is consolation in statistics, and an antidote in the 
 atlas. 
 
 Not long before my trip abroad I had lunch at 
 the Astor with the German novelist Felix Hollan 
 der, literary adviser of the Deutsche Theater in 
 Berlin. We looked out upon Long Acre Square. 
 My visitor was disappointed. It seemed to him 
 that we were already* too sophisticated, too civi 
 lized. He had not expected Indians in City Hall, 
 but he deplored the absence of the vigorous primi 
 tive note which the imagination of the Old World 
 associates with the New. 
 
 I assured him that our seeming culture is all
 
 THE OLD WORLD LURE 3 
 
 superficial. Can we learn in a century, except par 
 rot-wise, the lesson of five thousand years? With 
 us it is all veneer. Scratch the American and the 
 aboriginal Indian appears. 
 
 The savage, to be sure, is more interesting at 
 times than the sophist. But he is utterly absurd 
 when he is ashamed of himself, or pretends to be 
 civilized. The average American in literature and 
 in morals is a Hottentot wearing a stove-pipe. 
 His sophistication is unreal. His wisdom is 
 shrewdness. His vices are ordinary, his religious 
 convictions shallow. He is good-natured, but 
 ignorant and irreverent. He has the heart of a 
 child and the conceit of a monkey. 
 
 Abroad they imagine that our minds are as vast 
 as our lands. They credit us intellectually with 
 the expansiveness of the Harriman roads and the 
 subtlety of the Standard Oil. They don't under 
 stand that we have subdued the forces of nature 
 materially without having conquered them in 
 spirit. We do not penetrate to the heart of things. 
 The poetry of commerce eludes us. We build 
 highroads between continents, without imagina 
 tion. Our outlook is provincial. We utterly lack 
 finesse. 
 
 Our patriotism is the only imaginative ingredi 
 ent in our national structure. It is crude at that 
 and hysterical. And it does not prevent us from 
 cheating our country in business. Our savagery 
 is apparent in our mediaeval administration of
 
 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 justice; in our vulgar disregard of aesthetics for 
 morals; above all, in our absurd and insincere 
 worship of females. The American man has 
 rightly been called the pay-monkey of the Amer 
 ican woman. He pays for her lingerie as well as 
 her folly. She is protected, set aside, placed on a 
 pedestal, both by the law and by custom. He is 
 defenseless. Our government is a matriarchy in 
 disguise. 
 
 I was born on the Continent, but brought up in 
 America. My racial consciousness is distinctly 
 dual. I am at home in America. I have an in 
 sider's view. But an insider's view from the out 
 side dispassionate, impartial. Yet I am not em 
 barrassed for a thread in the labyrinth of Europe. 
 I need both countries as a legless man needs his 
 crutches. 
 
 Europe is essential to my well-being. I must 
 bathe periodically in the fount of its authentic 
 civilization, wallow in its corruption, soar in its 
 dreams. Still, I am too much of an American to 
 lose myself in it altogether. I have seen its depths 
 and its heights. I have conversed with counts and 
 cabbies, art students and ambassadors, scientists, 
 soldiers, privy councilors and prostitutes. There 
 was much that I admired, and much that de 
 pressed me. 
 
 I tried to understand it all, and to make the 
 best of it. At every step I became increasingly 
 conscious of being constituted differently from the
 
 THE OLD WORLD LURE 5 
 
 people I met and saw. But the first impressions 
 were overwhelming. When, alone and a stranger, 
 I entered Berlin, the luminous heart of Europe, 
 my emotions were those of a young Barbarian who 
 had crossed the Alps for the first time, and for the 
 first time saw Rome. 
 
 The trip itself held no allurements for me. Like 
 Oscar Wilde, I am bored by the ocean. I prefer 
 sherbets to sunsets. I am, however, not insensible 
 to the loveliness of the visible world. But I can 
 not take it, as Germans drink beer, in slow sips. 
 I gulp it down, like a cocktail. 
 
 It is absurd to go abroad in the summer when 
 everybody is in the country. I went late in the 
 fall. There were only a few people on board. 
 Mostly musical students. There were two flirta- 
 tive Western girls with their mother. The mother 
 was like a hen an intelligent hen. The girls 
 were singing birds pretty and flighty. 
 
 One of the girls on board had large eyes like a 
 doe. They tell me her voice was charming. She 
 had scraped together every cent to study abroad. 
 And she was very grateful for every little atten 
 tion. It hurt me when she laughed. I always felt 
 somehow as though she were going down to some 
 tragic cataclysm. 
 
 I hope she will never see this. 
 
 Then there was a flute-player, a spirited little 
 girl, with whom I was in love for two hours, while 
 the train rolled from Cuxhaven to Hamburg.
 
 6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 The men were in the minority. There was a 
 coarse ship's physician. And there was Hans. 
 Hans was a sailor-boy, eighteen summers old, and 
 absolutely delightful. The women made posi 
 tively indecent advances to him which they would 
 hardly have made to a social equal. The boy, 
 clever, well-educated, requited their efforts with 
 smiling contempt. They saw only the smile. The 
 contempt escaped them. 
 
 In the first cabin were only three men passen 
 gers and a tenor. The tenor had no voice. One 
 of the men was a Chicago physician, whom the law 
 permitted to practise and to kill within the confines 
 of the United States, but who went to Vienna to 
 acquire more precise methods of murder. The 
 Standard Oil Octopus was also represented on 
 board. It had one of its tentacles there: a young 
 engineer. I looked upon him with awe, as one 
 looks upon a policeman. 
 
 The Standard Oil Company is the most awe- 
 inspiring thing in the United States. It is more 
 stable than the government. Certainly it is more 
 powerful and of more profit to us. Trust mag 
 nates, like politicians, work for their own pockets. 
 But trust magnates can afford to be more mag 
 nanimous. The Trust, being productive, cannot 
 enrich itself without enriching the country. 
 
 I completed the masculine trio. 
 
 We spent most of the time in the smoking- 
 room, discussing women, the three men and the
 
 THE OLD WORLD LURE 7 
 
 tenor. I did the talking. The trip was a liberal 
 education for them. I painted the Eldorado 
 of Europe in glowing colors. 
 
 Not that I believed in that Eldorado. I was 
 afraid that I would be horribly disappointed. Yet 
 intellectual curiosity urged me on. I sometimes 
 seem to myself like the Wandering Jew in Otto 
 Julius Bierbaum's Selfsame Geschichten, doomed 
 ever to seek for the truth without believing in its 
 existence. 
 
 Emotionally I was totally apathetic, until we 
 approached the British Isles and the Old World 
 Lure began to exert upon me its irresistible fasci 
 nation. Vast and multi-colored vistas came to me 
 on the pinions of memory when I realized with a 
 thrill that the jagged line at my left hand was 
 Shakespeare's England and that " the pleasant 
 land of France " dreamed at my right. I thought 
 of Napoleon crossing the channel, a prisoner. And 
 I thought of another sad exile whom the British 
 have killed and whose grave is in Paris. 
 
 Oscar Wilde rests not far from one whom Ger 
 many, to her shame, has rejected. Like him, a 
 poet, brilliant and cynical. And, like him, the son 
 of a race down-trodden and melancholy. I won 
 der if in desolate nights the ghost of Oscar Wilde 
 holds concourse with Heinrich Heine? And if 
 the worm has not devastated their smile, they may 
 even smile, seeing that both are revenged on their 
 people. Bernard Shaw, the cynical voice of Wilde,
 
 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 with none of Wilde's poetry, has turned England 
 topsy-turvy; and Jiingstdeutschland has received 
 from Heine his poison, but not his honey. 
 
 And I thought of the Vikings who discovered 
 the New World before the birth of Columbus. 
 And of the Wars of the Roses. I thought of Swin 
 burne, the voice of the sea and of sin; and of Dar 
 win and Goethe; of Maeterlinck and D'Annunzio. 
 I thought of Jeanne d'Arc, who was burnt as a 
 witch and is now a saint. And I thought of the 
 Roman days. 
 
 I thought of Caesar who had conquered Gaul, 
 and of the Briton who conquered Caesar. I saw 
 Plato with his noble, strangely Germanic visage, 
 and Socrates with the face and the cheeks of the 
 Slav. This was the land where Jupiter had loved 
 Europa, and Prometheus had snatched the fateful 
 fire! And in the far distance I almost felt the 
 presence, stupendous and terrifying, of Asia, 
 mother of continents, plagues and messiahs.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 
 
 WE in America make things most unpleasant 
 for newcomers. We inquire into their solvency. 
 We question their morals. And, naively enough, 
 ask their political faith. Europe receives her 
 visitors with the smile of a woman of culture. And 
 beams her broadest smile upon us. The Old 
 World regards us with a curious mixture of amuse 
 ment and awe. Much as the subtle-witted Greek 
 may have looked upon his Barbarian conqueror. 
 They are afraid of us, but they refuse to take us 
 seriously. Some one has compared Germany to 
 Greece; we have been called the Rome of the 
 Western World. In Germany to-day the spirit of 
 Athens is vibrant there are some who say that 
 Plato himself was a German. Our coarse-fibered 
 strenuosity relates us in many ways to the 
 Romans. 
 
 Like the Romans we lack ideals and ideas. Sub 
 tleties are beyond us. We have no sense of tra 
 dition and reverence. There are only three tra 
 ditions we cherish: the Monroe Doctrine, the 
 Puritan Sabbath, and the absurd superstition that 
 
 9
 
 io CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the White House should harbor no man for more 
 than eight years. We adhere to these traditions 
 with Antony's devotion to his matchless inamo 
 rata. We nurse them with the frantic affection 
 of a grief-stricken Niobe. They are all we have. 
 All else is chaos. 
 
 Irreverence for old age is bred in our bones. 
 We hate established things. Like children, we 
 sometimes break our toys merely to break them. 
 To feel that we can do things. The will to live is 
 strong in us, but we express it crudely. Fre 
 quently, to use a Vergilian phrase, by " making a 
 noise with our mouths." On Election Day and 
 on the Fourth of July we are the noisiest two- 
 legged animal. The rattlesnake, not the eagle, 
 should be our national emblem. The League of 
 Silence, consecrated to humanity by Mrs. Isaac L. 
 Rice, and the " noiseless gun " invented by Hiram 
 Maxim, are the two most auspicious events in the 
 history of American culture. 
 
 Quiet distinction is beyond us. We must shriek 
 at the top of our voices. We have no manners. 
 We lack urbanity. The little tug that takes you 
 to shore in Hamburg is called " Welcome ! " And 
 across the bow of the one that takes you back is 
 written: " Auf Wiedersehen! " No American 
 brain could have conceived of this. It is too gra 
 cious and simple. We would christen the one, 
 "Undesirable Immigrant;" and bestow upon the 
 other the appellation " Avaunt I "
 
 FIRST SHOCKS n 
 
 There is a train that takes you to Hamburg 
 from where you land. It is more comfortable 
 than our parlor-cars. There are little compart 
 ments, each with doors and curtains. Drawing 
 down these curtains, one may safely stretch one's 
 limbs in the languid sleep of the wicked. If sleep 
 has no allurements for us, we may yield to the 
 blandishments of his brother Cupid. The Ger 
 man's coupe is his castle. No Pullman porter's 
 face emerging from the horizon like a great, black 
 moon, will eclipse, even momentarily, your beau 
 tiful vis-a-vis. 
 
 I received, however, two severe shocks on that 
 trip. One, when the conductor on his circuit of 
 inspection demanded the visible evidence of my 
 right to occupy the compartment. He spoke to 
 me tenderly, as a mother speaks to her nursling. 
 My astonishment yielded to utter felicity I 
 gasped open-mouthed, when he actually lifted his 
 cap to me. He saluted me ! He made me feel like 
 a railroad president. Courtesy dwells in the bosom 
 of the German railroad conductor. 
 
 The second shock was no less severe. The 
 Western lady with the two daughters, (the Hen), 
 was the cause of my consternation. There was a 
 man selling beer at the station. She almost gob 
 bled up his tray with her hungry eyes. But her 
 tongue still refused to articulate the desire that 
 had already subjected her conscience. For he who 
 looks at a glass of Pilsener with an evil longing is
 
 12 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 no longer a teetotaler in his heart. At last, with 
 a gesture of despair, she beckoned to him, glanc 
 ing guiltily at my countenance, then lit up with in 
 comprehensible glee. I am sure she felt horribly 
 wicked. But the struggle between thirst and pro 
 priety had consumed several minutes. Precious 
 minutes! By the time the man reappeared with 
 his tray the train was already in motion. He 
 slowly vanished from our field of vision, waving 
 to us from afar his frantic regret, like the ghost 
 of a sin we had not dared to commit. 
 . The sense of propriety, like the chameleon, 
 changes with its environment. Americans abroad 
 are humanized for the time being. They dis 
 pense with convention; they breathe with a novel 
 freedom. Our conventions don't fit us. They 
 don't fit any man. We are glad to discard them. 
 We leave them in cold storage in Hamburg or 
 Bremen. We redeem them on our return. Once 
 back in America we are very proper Tartuffe 
 when he goes to church. 
 
 When you arrive in a European city the first 
 thing you do is to take a cab. It is delightful and 
 inexpensive. How different from when you land 
 in New York! Abroad, if you think you are over 
 charged, you call a policeman. And you are safe. 
 Alas ! it is not so here. Recently a friend of mine, 
 a young Hungarian poet, on his arrival hired a 
 cab at a Hoboken ferry. His destination was 
 Harlem. When the cabby finally mentioned his
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 13 
 
 price, the bard insisted upon being driven back 
 to Police Headquarters in Mulberry street. He 
 came near being locked up. In the end he had to 
 unburden his pocket of twenty-five dollars. For 
 that price you can hire a cab for a week in 
 Berlin. 
 
 There is much to be said for the cab. Need I 
 conjure up the delightful murders and mysterious 
 elopements the novelist's imagination associates 
 with this vehicle? Wherever the hansom monop 
 olizes traffic, life is wonderful and complex. It is 
 an inducement to self-respect. It makes you feel 
 like a millionaire. The swift revolution of the 
 wheels annihilates distance, and creates class dis 
 tinction. I can afford to take a cab. My wash 
 erwoman cannot. That is, abroad. In this coun 
 try we would both travel by trolley, and I should 
 have to give her my seat if the car were crowded. 
 I don't want to hang on the same strap with my 
 barber! Not that I am a snob. But the thing is 
 impossible. 
 
 Europe recognizes without much ado the bar 
 rier between us. America blatantly denies the 
 ultimate lesson of evolution, the doctrine of dif 
 ferentiation. Here he and I are equals, unless my 
 coffers overflow with iniquitous riches, and the 
 smell of gasoline is sweet in my nostrils. Then, 
 indeed, even Justice will incline her scale in my 
 favor, and the magistrates of the police court, sit 
 ting in judgment over the quick, not the dead, will
 
 14 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 tenderly hail me by name when a blundering offi 
 cer of the law has again arrested my speed and 
 my chauffeur. 
 
 In Europe the barber will always remember his 
 station. He will not forget it if we meet on the 
 street. Decades may pass while he wields the 
 razor; his shavings may amount to a pile: he will 
 still be a menial. Of course the case is different 
 if he suddenly develops a tenor voice. Then Eu 
 rope will carry him upon her shoulders. The 
 bomb of genius breaks through the barrier of 
 caste. But the day we erase from our cerebrum 
 the absurd fallacy of equality we shall rejoin the 
 choir of civilized nations. Inequality, differentia 
 tion as Washington knew is the essence of 
 culture. 
 
 On leaving the cab you tip the coachman; only 
 a few pennies he will salute you, and smile, and 
 be happy. In America, where he is your equal, 
 he will pocket your generous tip with a savage 
 growl, as if you had tried to insult him. He will 
 hardly say " Thank you ! " In that respect he 
 seems to have entered into a silent conspiracy with 
 his cousin the barber, and his brother the waiter. 
 When I give a tip abroad, I feel that the Record 
 ing Angel is entering the transaction on the credit 
 side of my ledger. When I tip an American I 
 feel I am being robbed. Wine turns to gall 
 in my glass. I become a misanthrope and a 
 miser.
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 15 
 
 At the hotel you will probably order a meal. 
 You may not want a hearty meal. You may not 
 feel like eating your way through a big table 
 d'hote. So you order some Wiener Schnitzel, and 
 Preisselbeeren, and some Moselle wine. The 
 Preisselbeere, let me add, is the cranberry raised 
 to the wth power. The waiter brings you the 
 viands, not as if he were doing you a favor, but 
 as if you were actually a person of consideration. 
 Everything he brings you is toothsome. There is 
 a delightful individuality about it all. 
 
 Our lack of imagination is most obvious in our 
 food. The art of dining expires upon the bosoms 
 of our cooks. The intolerable monotony of the 
 American menu merits a chapter in Dante's In 
 ferno. We are invariably compelled to fall back 
 upon the last resort of the unimaginative steak. 
 In Europe every restaurant has its specialties. Try 
 the same dainty in two different ratskellers; you 
 can tell blindfolded which is which. That 
 is, if you are a gourmet. If you chew your 
 food with your imagination, not alone with your 
 teeth. 
 
 Ah ! and the nice crisp rolls they have ! And for 
 their rye bread I would sell my soul to the devil. 
 You are about to regale yourself with the bread. 
 Suddenly you miss something. " Ober! " you cry. 
 That means Waiter Superior. Every German 
 waiter is called Herr Ober. That is a sop to Ger 
 man patriotism. It implies the excellence of the
 
 1 6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 German waiter. He is the Overman of waiter- 
 dom. 
 
 The Herr Ober appears anxiously scanning 
 your face. " Where is the butter? " you ask. 
 " Butter? The gentleman didn't order any." 
 
 Yes ! You are actually expected to order your 
 butter. And, what is more, the items will appear 
 on your check. In France they make you pay for 
 your napkin. But at the final reckoning you find 
 that you are saving a lot of money. In New 
 York I pay for my modest needs at lunch almost a 
 dollar. In Berlin I have had Backhaehndl, a 
 dream in chicken, delicious beyond words; inef 
 fable Preisselbeeren; a cantata in whipped cream 
 called strawberry bomb; and a jug of honest wine, 
 all for one mark and twenty Pfennige, or about 
 thirty cents. But I have to pay two cents for 
 butter ! 
 
 We Americans always expect something for 
 nothing. We are a nation of grafters. We have 
 not yet mentally digested that the least is always 
 the most expensive. We pay most dearly for what 
 costs us nothing. Besides, we are in the habit of 
 continually wasting money by paying for things 
 we don't want, or don't get, merely because others 
 presumably want them and get them. We have 
 an idea lodged somewhere in our cranium that 
 money is easily made, because at the touch of some 
 modern Midas watered stock turns to gold. Al 
 beit few of us are initiates in his secret, we are
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 17 
 
 tempted to emulate the munificence of his house 
 hold. We live within his means, not ours. 
 
 The average American, like the savage, makes 
 no provision for the future. The mind of the 
 twelve-dollar clerk, oblivious to the actual value 
 of money, refuses to grasp that a dollar is the 
 symbol of half a day's wearisome drudgery. And 
 all sense of the significance of the individual green 
 back is lost in a roseate mist when his salary climbs 
 up to the dazzling height of twenty-five per. We 
 have yet to learn the rudimentary fact that the 
 value of a coin fluctuates continually as it wanders 
 from one man's hand to another's. We are, in 
 consequence, the most wasteful of nations. Waste 
 ful of nerve-juice and sweat, equally wasteful of 
 forests and nature's multiple bounties. Far from 
 being a business-like people, we wallow like hogs 
 in our transient abundance. 
 
 Here is waste everywhere. In the Berlin sub 
 way to instance a significant illustration of munici 
 pal economy every man is his own conductor. 
 This I suspect to be a devious method on the part 
 of the State to cultivate in its subjects the military 
 virtue of self-reliance. In American cities, the con 
 ductor sneezes, coughs, or makes some other inar 
 ticulate sound when the train approaches the sta 
 tion. To interpret these catarrhal noises in intel 
 ligible terms well-nigh exhausts the imagination. 
 There are no plainly marked stations as in Berlin; 
 and who would dare address a conductor? His
 
 1 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 primary function, apparently, is to impress upon 
 us in uncouth colloquial gabble the urgency of dis 
 patch. Sometimes he jabs us. 
 
 On the subway trains of the German metrop 
 olis there are no conductors, neither is there dan 
 ger to life and limb. There is no obscene crowd 
 ing, there is no strap-hanging modern substitutes 
 for mediaeval institutions of torture. When a car 
 is filled to its capacity no avaricious syndicate at 
 tempts to disprove the truth still maintained by the 
 physicists that two bodies cannot occupy the same 
 space at the same time. 
 
 Well may a sense of personal grievance intrude 
 upon the calmness of my philosophic reflection: 
 the New York subway system has snatched from 
 me, (at Ninety-sixth Street), the best-beloved of 
 sweethearts! How well I remember the tragic 
 occurrence ! Fate has engraved each detail on my 
 brain with her indelible pencil! A sea of human 
 agony pressed upon us from all sides. Suddenly 
 she was gone ! One last glimpse of her beckoning 
 hands ! One last swish of departing silks ! A 
 muffled cry, I cannot explain it, being neither H. 
 G. Wells, nor Jules Verne, and the hungry jaws 
 of incomprehensible void had closed upon her. 
 She had actually been crushed out of known space, 
 and disappeared into the fourth dimension. 
 Now, in Berlin, the police would not per 
 mit such a thing to happen, because " it is strength- 
 ily undersaid " to leave the platform without
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 19 
 
 having delivered one's ticket to the Cerberus at 
 the gate. 
 
 We are wastrels of time in bar-room and club, 
 but we risk our lives to save a minute in locomo 
 tion. The German law, unlike our own, does not 
 regard suicide as a punishable offense, but at least 
 it saves you, even against yourself, from being 
 murdered by inches in a crowded car. How 
 ever annoying it may be to be compelled to wait 
 until the next train rolls leisurely into the station, 
 saintship does thereby hold out its crown to you: 
 you may practise the Christian virtue of patience. 
 Your misery, moreover, is not uncompanioned. 
 But if you are in a hurry a second-class compart 
 ment will hospitably receive you on payment of an 
 additional obolus. Mortals less fortunate travel 
 third. The system comprising two classes, even 
 in city traffic, is an excellent thing, excellent from 
 your point of view, commendable also from the 
 point of view of your financial inferior, to whom 
 plush seats are not indispensable. 
 
 The democratic delusion of equality and mob- 
 rule has not yet addled the brains of Europe. 
 Abroad even the Socialist is not convinced in his 
 heart that " all men are created free and equal." 
 But people respect your personality and your com 
 fort. They do not ask you to twist your body, 
 made in the image of God, into ludicrous shapes 
 as you hang to a strap. But they boldly affirm the 
 rights, of man as distinguished from woman. I
 
 20 CONFESSIONS OF A JBARBARIAN 
 
 devoutly believe in the rights of woman. I even 
 uphold universal suffrage, irrespective of the vul 
 gar distinction of either age or sex, limited merely 
 by a severe educational test. I believe in votes for 
 children as well as for women, provided they have 
 the brains. But I vigorously resent the monstrous 
 attempt of the American female to usurp man's 
 rights without man's duties, without, moreover, 
 relinquishing her prerogatives as a woman. In 
 Berlin every car has a special compartment for 
 smokers. We refuse to grant to the male that 
 last refuge, but, absurdly enough, institute special 
 cars for the ladies a startling flashlight into the 
 feminine character of our vaunted American 
 " civilization." 
 
 We fondly imagine that we are a practical peo 
 ple. We invent time- and labor-saving machines. 
 Our ingenuity, however, deserts us when it comes 
 to making life more pleasant. We should all like 
 to live in houses with elevators, but insolvency 
 stands at the gate like an irate angel. The ordi 
 nary elevator is a monstrous thing, devouring 
 space and service. But the wizards of Berlin have 
 installed in dwellings hardly larger than a Nu 
 remberg toy house, lilliputian lifts commensurate 
 with their size. Electricity ingeniously applied 
 supplants the attendant. A good fairy disguised 
 as the landlady presents every tenant with a 
 magic key. When it is slipped into the keyhole 
 the elevator promptly answers your summons. The
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 21 
 
 door swings open to welcome you, and the moment 
 you step on the mat within, a cunning device turns 
 on the electric light. The brain-endowed elevator 
 halts at your floor; you close a partition, and 
 presto! down it goes of its own accord. 
 
 Profiting by the mishap of the hero of the 
 Arabian Nights, the municipality subjects you to 
 an examination of your ability to pronounce the 
 magical Sesame before the key is entrusted into 
 your keeping. But the whole affair is so simple 
 and so safe that a child can learn it all without 
 special instruction. Rents are high in Berlin, 
 comparatively speaking, but many people can af 
 ford to live in elevator houses over there, who 
 wouldn't dream of it here. And yet I feel sure 
 that in our city houses, honeycombed with apart 
 ments, thousands of women are annually crippled 
 or killed by climbing too many stairs. 
 
 There are few things beyond our reach if we 
 are determined to get them. But where shall we 
 look for guidance? Our instincts are wavering 
 and vulgar. We are the parvenu among nations. 
 Our children's children may, perhaps, acquire 
 reverence, refinement and polish. But there are 
 things one can only inherit. The atmosphere of a 
 place cannot be bartered for so many pieces of 
 silver. We can purchase with our gold pigeons 
 of the color of grapes, and of the color of slate- 
 quarries. We can pauperize them as we pauper 
 ize the squirrel. We can make them docile, until
 
 22 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 they nestle upon the palm of our hand. But we 
 cannot duplicate the Place of St. Mark in Venice. 
 
 Esthetic values are connotative. There is a 
 picturesqueness in Europe that one looks for in 
 vain in a newly-made country. Take the lovely 
 swans on the Alster in Hamburg. How lordly 
 they circle upon the river, fed by delicate Ledas 
 from the casements of restaurants by the water. 
 And in winter the seagulls are there. Myriads 
 and myriads of them. And there is an old man 
 who makes his living by selling fish to feed them. 
 You cannot help thinking of Heine watching the 
 birds and perchance writing a melancholy sonnet 
 about them. This is the city where he felt most 
 at home. It is strange that he should never have 
 sung of its loveliest aspect. 
 
 But the weirdest thing in Hamburg is its won 
 derful mists. They rise from the ground like a 
 thin veil until they swallow the city Rathans, 
 Alster and all. I had a curious thrill watching 
 a group of children playing on the lawn while 
 slowly, with mist-embroidered wings, the after 
 noon faded into the dusk. At first the milk-white 
 veil barely touched their feet. They were like 
 angel-boys in some Raphael painting, dancing on 
 clouds at the knees of God. When I looked again, 
 the chilling breath of the fog had enveloped them, 
 as the Erl-King in Goethe's ballad envelops the 
 dying lad. Higher and higher rose the white 
 doom. At last I could only faintly distinguish
 
 FIRST SHOCKS 23 
 
 their figures : they seemed like children frolicking in 
 blissful unconsciousness at the bottom of the sea. 
 Then they disappeared altogether. 
 
 They must have caught cold. I am sure the fog 
 is unhealthy. But beauty is apt to be.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STATE IDEA 
 
 WE have compared ourselves to the Romans. 
 I, myself, have endorsed that comparison. But 
 I am afraid we flatter ourselves. We are unde 
 niably resourceful and mighty. Our dominion is 
 wider than Rome's. We can match the Appian 
 Way. We even have a sort of Caesar. That is 
 what the French call him, and not without jus 
 tice. Caesar was Rome. America, through Eu 
 rope's glasses, is Roosevelt. We, recognizing 
 the real master in his dual disguise, bow to 
 Rockefeller and Morgan. On the Continent 
 Rockefeller's memoirs met with scant success. 
 Roosevelt's books went. 
 
 Like Caesar, Roosevelt is a historian. The fu 
 ture will speak of both as popular leaders. Greek 
 students will perhaps employ the Greek equivalent 
 of the term. Perhaps every statesman must be 3 
 demagogue. And every prophet a charlatan. 
 Theodore, like the great Julius, is intensely the 
 atrical, and intensely convulsively dynamic. 
 Both men believed in their star. Both men, after 
 startling domestic exploits, submerged themselves 
 
 24
 
 THE STATE IDEA 25 
 
 temporarily in the African jungle. Roosevelt, 
 like Caesar, has hunted big game. But not as big 
 as Caesar's. He has founded no kingdom by the 
 Nile; nor followed the river to its mystical 
 sources. And there was no Cleopatra. That 
 would take more imagination than Mr. Roose 
 velt possesses. He has slain lions, instead, and 
 penned laborious articles, at a dollar a word, for 
 the Outlook and Scribner's. 
 
 Intangible values are beyond us all. That is 
 why we adore individuals, not ideas. We worship 
 Roosevelt. But detest u My policies." The in 
 visible world is not for us. We have no use for 
 abstract ideals. That is where the Barbarian pops 
 up. We might well learn a lesson from the scroll 
 of the Jews. They have been loyal for four 
 thousand years to an imaginary kingdom. Per 
 haps their children will bequeath to America, in 
 token of gratitude, the fine idealism that still, at 
 least in prayer, turns their eyes to Jerusalem. Un 
 til that spirit shall have impregnated our system, 
 we shall be inferior to Rome. 
 
 The Romans, too, were a practical people. But 
 the Roman brain conceived of at least one great 
 abstraction: the State Idea Rome's greatest be 
 quest to the world. The Roman law is only its 
 offspring. The State was even greater than 
 Caesar. He was great, and his successors were 
 great by identifying themselves with this idea. 
 The majesty of the Emperor is the majesty of the
 
 26 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 State. An insult to him is an insult to all. Hence 
 Use majeste. Every Roman owed allegiance to 
 this abstraction. The moment we believe in an ab 
 straction, we project it into reality. " Civis 
 Romanus sum " was the most tangible thing in 
 Roman civilization. 
 
 We remember our citizenship only in trouble 
 when we've made fools of ourselves abroad. We, 
 too, no doubt have public-spirited men. We are 
 more generous than Europe. We give billions 
 to libraries. To universities. Churches. Hos 
 pitals. But not, willingly, one cent to the State. 
 Who ever dreams of paying the public debt? On 
 the contrary. We don't mind " doing " the State. 
 We swear off taxes. We perjure ourselves at the 
 Custom House. In our heart of hearts, we ap 
 prove of illicit rebates. We attach no blame to 
 municipal thievery. We wouldn't abstract a 
 penny from another man's pocketbook. But we'd 
 all like to take millions out of the State's. The 
 State Idea eludes our brains. We are shamed 
 by the beehive. Vainly have we watched with un 
 intelligent eyes, from the day that we swung in 
 the trees by our tails, the government of the ant 
 hill. 
 
 Where the State Idea crystallizes in the execu 
 tive function, we actually fear it. A great na 
 tional party opposes every extension of federal 
 power. Our Constitution decentralizes the gov 
 ernment. We resent its tangible presence. Even
 
 THE STATE IDEA 27 
 
 benevolent state compulsion revolts us. That is 
 one reason why we oppose direct taxation. We 
 prefer to pay twice the amount indirectly. For the 
 same reason we shall never be Socialists. The 
 scarlet flower of Socialism thrives only upon the 
 soil of the State Idea. We are, most of us, un 
 conscious anarchs. We believe in the greatest in 
 dividual freedom, in universal laissez faire, ex 
 cept where it is absolutely defensible : in the sphere 
 of sex and individual morals. 
 
 Abroad there is a greater laxity in these mat 
 ters. But rigorous laws regulate everything else. 
 The very rigor of the law makes for greater free 
 dom. A distinct line exists between the permis 
 sible and the unlawful. Here we are all at sea. 
 There are so many contradictory laws that no man 
 knows where he stands. The execution of the law 
 is left to individual caprice. Much depends on 
 the temper of the District Attorney and the state 
 of judicial livers. 
 
 If all the laws on our statute books were car 
 ried out for a single day, the land would be de 
 populated. We would all be in jail. Abroad I 
 know that the State will make me do certain things. 
 But I may sleep peacefully at night. I need not 
 fear to wake up a convict. There are no legal pit 
 falls. Here all is uncertain. We all walk on 
 quicksands. 
 
 The moment you enter your hotel abroad, the 
 paw of the State is raised. The hotel clerk, trans-
 
 formed for the nonce into the instrument of a 
 sovereign power, with gesture grand presents you 
 with an ominous slip. Lots of questions are 
 printed on it. It's a sort of examination sheet. 
 Where do you come from? What do you want? 
 What's your business? How old are you? And 
 what's your religion? My traveling companions 
 were furious at this in Hamburg, and almost 
 speechless in Berlin. The City of Berlin followed 
 them argus-eyed to their private lodgings. Fail 
 ure to report their presence, we learned, would 
 have subjected the landlady to a fine. Before 
 twice twenty-four hours had elapsed inspectors 
 would have been hot upon their trail. 
 
 One young man wanted to leave for home at 
 once, or, as Schiller would say, " to behold Ger 
 many with his back." He had been requested to 
 present himself personally to the police. So far 
 as I know, there was nothing against him. He is 
 nice, clean, upright; quite a likable chap. I know 
 I ought to; for, to tell the truth, that young man 
 was me. I am fully aware that this is bad gram 
 mar; but in moments of extreme suspense the 
 elegancies of diction desert us. 
 
 Resistance being futile, I obeyed the summons. 
 But my feet became frigid. My heart " fell into 
 my trousers" that is how the Germans phrase it. 
 Not that I was conscious of any crime. But you 
 can never tell! There are so many laws. And 
 alone! In a foreign land! The police inspector
 
 THE STATE IDEA 29 
 
 looked me over, not unkindly. He asked a few 
 questions. He nodded. And all was over. My 
 landlady was surprised to see me come back. It 
 was so obvious that I felt hurt. I am sure she had 
 taken me for at least a murderer, or the fugitive 
 second vice president of some financial concern. 
 
 I had brought the trouble upon my own head 
 by designating myself as a " Fire-worshiper." I 
 had in mind, no doubt, the Divine Fire; but in 
 Germany fire worship is not recognized by the 
 State. With reluctant hand, I substituted the 
 legally accepted term " Lutheran "for my fiery 
 Credo. 
 
 One of my fellow-passengers had a harder time 
 of it than I the lady with the pathetic eyes. I 
 knew misfortune was flapping its somber wings 
 over her head. She had registered as a Quaker. 
 The policeman thought she was jesting unduly: in 
 German the word is the onomatopoeia for the 
 musical sounds that rise with reiterative insistence 
 on moonlit nights from the frog pond. Unfortu 
 nately neither understood the language of the 
 other. The poor girl was terribly frightened when 
 the bluecoat threatened to arrest her for insulting 
 an officer, an instrument of the State. 
 
 I regarded the situation with philosophic com 
 posure. The troubles of others leave us extra 
 ordinarily calm. Finally my good nature pre 
 vailed. The girl's friends were angry with the 
 German Empire, until the joke dawned upon them.
 
 30 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 It never dawned upon her. The deeper signifi 
 cance of the incident had, however, impressed it 
 self upon me. I no longer resented the solicitude 
 of the government. Far from it: I felt pleased, 
 touched, elated, moved to tears, yes and flattered, 
 that the German Empire and the City of Berlin 
 should be so anxious about me. 
 
 There was something personal in this interest. 
 It was cordial. I felt Germania had taken us to 
 her ample bosom. She protected us. We had be 
 come members of her imperial household. Her 
 concern in us was benign. Her questions were the 
 natural curiosity of a friend. Our names are now 
 filed at police headquarters. If we get into 
 trouble, they'll make a cross against our names. 
 They keep tab on our movements. 
 
 I admit that powerful arguments may be ad 
 vanced against the system from the point of view 
 of the thug. However, every net has its meshes. 
 Criminals have escaped even from Moabit. The 
 escapades of the Hauptmann of Kopenik have 
 split the sides of the world with laughter. But the 
 Black Hand will never make its headquarters in 
 Berlin. No Mafia will there raise its head; no 
 band of ruffians establish a reign of terror. 
 
 The German registry system prevails in most 
 continental cities. It is annoying until you grasp 
 it. Ultimately you walk about with a new sense 
 of security. The European merchant princes need 
 never pillow their calculating heads above a loaded
 
 THE STATE IDEA 31 
 
 revolver. The forces of the State are arrayed to 
 protect them. It's all the difference between 
 civilization and barbarism. I thought of it when 
 I saw An Englishman's Home, in the scene 
 where the invading army first enters the house, and 
 Mr. Brown, the landlord, angrily calls: " Police! " 
 Ridiculous? Yes. But also sublime. 
 
 Everywhere is the eye of that big abstraction, 
 the State. It is obeyed even when its vigilance re 
 laxes. I have said that the subway trains had sec 
 ond- and third-class compartments. The tickets 
 are differently colored. But there is hardly any 
 control once you are on the platform. At first I 
 felt tempted to enter a second-class compartment 
 with a third-class ticket. We are accustomed to 
 countenance breaches of the eighth command 
 ment, except in personal business transactions. 
 Let not the Gibson- and the Christy-Girls elevate 
 their haughty brows. They are hardened offend 
 ers. A corporation isn't a person. So we don't 
 feel bound to be honest with it. Now, in Germany 
 you'd be regarded as a common thief if you omit 
 ted to pay your fare. Honesty there is not virtue, 
 but habit. Obedience to law is second nature. 
 Factory owners, strange to say, are habitually care 
 ful of human life. We have not outgrown the 
 heathen idea that so many pieces of silver atone 
 for a human life. We find murder cheaper than 
 caution. 
 
 Abroad regulations are stringent. But the
 
 32 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 State threatens no one with a year's imprisonment 
 and a fine of five hundred dollars for trivial of 
 fenses. In the state of New York, by a curious 
 freak of statute, the penalty for adultery is half 
 that for spitting in a street-car. Obviously, spit 
 ting is more tempting to the average American 
 than the allurements of Venus. In Europe adul 
 tery is a pleasant diversion. No gentleman, how 
 ever, expectorates in the street. The severity of 
 the law is reserved for important transgressions. 
 
 The Tentacle of the Octopus, the youthful hire 
 ling of the Standard Oil, recalled my attention to 
 certain significant facts. The columns of smoke 
 writhing like graceful serpents out of factory 
 chimneys are indeed poison-fanged adders. 
 Death lurks in the breath of their nostrils. " At 
 home," the youth confided to me, " I don't care 
 what becomes of the chemicals that escape with 
 the smoke. In Austria, where I am going to 
 found a plant, we are compelled to convert them 
 into innocuous vapors." 
 
 The Tentacle wriggled with wrath. 
 
 " May not the vapors be turned into useful by 
 products?" I asked. "Man extracts gold from 
 water. Can he wrest no treasure from smoke?" 
 
 " Certainly," he replied, with a contemptuous 
 shrug. " But we don't bother about it. We don't 
 think there's enough in it." 
 
 The benefit to the community would be incal 
 culable. Children's lungs would no longer be filled
 
 THE STATE IDEA 33 
 
 with corruption. But the benefit to him as an in 
 dividual and to the corporation as such was too 
 small. So he swallowed his share of the poison 
 with Socratic composure. We are all free and 
 equal to swallow it. 
 
 We'd move heaven and earth to help a cripple. 
 We'd all chip in for a hungry child. But we don't 
 mind poisoning hundreds and thousands of chil 
 dren daily and hourly. Children in the abstract 
 fail to move us to pity. We are a nation of Her- 
 ods. But Herod had reason for slaying the little 
 ones. And he slew them mercifully and quickly. 
 We have divers methods of murder. 
 
 Our favorite mode of infanticide is asphyxia 
 tion. We take air and light from our babies till 
 they languish like starved little plants. Economy 
 is commendable. The Germans are thrifty enough. 
 But they will not let sky-scrapers blot out the sun. 
 The height of a house must be proportionate to 
 the width of the street. They go even further 
 than that. In certain residential sections you are 
 not permitted to put up a house at all unless you 
 follow a prescribed architectural style. Art for 
 once wields a bludgeon, exacting subservience to an 
 aesthetic abstraction. She harmonizes individual 
 eccentricities. In Europe each town is an entity: 
 our municipalities are jumbles of iron and stone 
 gazing squint-eyed at heaven. 
 
 If the State fathers its subjects, the community 
 mothers them. One city, Schoeneberg-by-Berlin,
 
 34 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 has entered into a secret compact with Herr 
 Stork. Every stork in Schoeneberg drops a 
 bank-book on the window-sill when it does its duty. 
 The city presents every baby with a bank account 
 not a fat one, to be sure. Only one mark, bear 
 ing interest at four per cent. But it is supposed to 
 grow nice and fat with the baby. If you happen 
 to be a million-dollar baby anyway, you are twenty- 
 five cents more to the good. If you are not, your 
 wee little foot is placed at least on the first rung of 
 the ladder of high finance. 
 
 Where happiness reigns, health is the twin of 
 wealth. The circulation of the blood is more im 
 portant than the circulation of money. The State 
 paternally enforces its sanitary demands. If dis 
 ease eats your marrow, the forbidding countenance 
 of the State assumes the benignant smile of a Good 
 Samaritan. When old age has weakened your 
 limbs, the inexorable gatherer of taxes will replen 
 ish your pockets. The United States, in a similar 
 predicament, conjures up the specter of national 
 bankruptcy. We are too poor to be humane. We 
 must spend half of our national income on battle 
 ships. What would we say to a boy who invested 
 half his lunch-money in boxing-gloves? We would 
 actually rather deal death to others than make 
 living more pleasant for ourselves. England's 
 bill for Dreadnoughts is even greater than ours. 
 Nevertheless, she has her old-age pensions. Ger 
 many has a wonderful system of compulsory in-
 
 THE STATE IDEA 35 
 
 surance. If the German owes service to the State, 
 he, in turn, is not unrewarded. The State owes 
 him some compensation some kind of decent old 
 age. 
 
 I may not have gotten my figures right, and 
 my dates may be inexact, but the idea is this. If 
 you make less than two thousand marks a year, 
 you are compelled to provide through insurance 
 against the three-headed monster accident, age, 
 and disease. Your employer pays one-half of the 
 expense. You pay the other half. When you are 
 old and cannot work any more, you get your pen 
 sion. The State sees to that. The State presents 
 you with an additional annual bonus of fifty marks. 
 This payment, insufficient in itself, establishes the 
 principle of reciprocal obligation between the na 
 tion and you. 
 
 If you work in an industrial concern where 
 there is some danger, and your annual income is 
 less than three thousand marks, your employer 
 must pay the premium on your accident policy. 
 Suppose you work in a factory where you have 
 been earning twelve hundred marks, and you are 
 hurt. At once the State comes to your rescue. A 
 respectable hospital opens its doors to you. Your 
 family receives financial assistance. If you are 
 totally disabled, an annual pension of eight or nine 
 hundred marks assures your daily subsistence. 
 And if you should die, your widow will receive 
 a pension of over six hundred marks for the
 
 36 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 remainder of her natural life. If she decides 
 to marry again, the State cheerfully presents her 
 with a substantial bonus, and still contributes to 
 the expense of educating your children. You don't 
 have to sue anybody to get your money. You 
 don't have to accept a meager settlement and di 
 vide with a rascally lawyer. And whether you 
 want it or not, you are insured. You have nothing 
 to say in the matter. Neither has your boss. Prob 
 ably your wages will suffer a little, but at least 
 you are safe from the poorhouse. With all her 
 military enthusiasm, Germany is not unmindful of 
 her soldiers of peace, the veterans of her indus 
 trial army. 
 
 We do not even pension our officials. Recently 
 the secretary of one of our embassies retired from 
 public life. He had served his country I do not 
 know how many years. The snows of seven de 
 cades had fallen on his hair. His back was bent, 
 his strength exhausted. Yet he would have been 
 exposed to actual want if a group of prosperous 
 financiers had not discharged from their private 
 fortunes the indebtedness of the Commonwealth. 
 We love to brag of our generosity. But we are 
 niggardly as a nation. We underpay our public 
 servants in office, and out of office we starve them. 
 We subject our ambassadors to humiliation in for 
 eign capitals. We pay starvation wages to our 
 Secretary of State; and force our ex-presidents to 
 seek refuge in Africa or the almshouse.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 " S. M." 
 
 " S. M." is written across the map of Europe. 
 It flares from the century's forehead. It is a magic 
 key to the German heart. S. M. Seine Majes- 
 tat is the vernacular for the Kaiser. 
 
 S. M. is a wonderful person. He pervades all 
 Germany. He is everywhere. He is a great man 
 perhaps the greatest contemporaneous figure. 
 Surely the greatest riddle. 
 
 Men, I have said, are ideas incarnate. And be 
 sides pur natural parents, we have spiritual pro 
 genitors to whom we are born in mystical mar 
 riage. Strange bedfellows breed strange off 
 spring. The fruit of the marriage between Faust 
 and Helen was Euphorion, a spirit of unstable and 
 rarefied composition. When the Twentieth Cen 
 tury wedded the Middle Ages, William II flashed 
 into life. Euphorion was not of the earth; in 
 him antagonistic elements were but imperfectly 
 blended. William II is cast in enduring mould; a 
 felicitous force has clinched the diverse meaning 
 of two inimical epochs in the brilliant paradox of 
 his being. 
 
 37
 
 38 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Logic, unaided, cannot fathom the mystery of 
 William II. I have always worshiped the 
 Sphinx. I even had a liaison with it once. Then 
 I thought I understood it. I didn't. But it is 
 easier to understand than the Kaiser. Woman is 
 an open book as compared with him. And it really 
 isn't difficult for the Sphinx to be mysterious. Its 
 greatest mystery is its silence. But the Kaiser isn't 
 silent. He makes speeches many of them. We 
 may interview, snapshot, and paint him: he still 
 leaves us puzzled. 
 
 William II reconciles in his person the most 
 incongruous traits. He is the most impulsive of 
 reigning monarchs. There can be no doubt about 
 that. Yet he is almost Machiavellian in premedi 
 tation. That telegram to Kruger was impulsive 
 and yet how carefully calculated! And prepared 
 at the Foreign Office ! Shrewd observers say that 
 the historical interview in the Daily Telegraph 
 had been no less carefully launched. And that the 
 hubbub attendant upon its publication furthered 
 some far-seeing plan. 
 
 At the time, it will be remembered, a cyclone 
 broke loose in German editorial ink-pots. And, 
 behold! William, the imperious, humbly bowed 
 his head. Perhaps he smiled to himself somewhat 
 sadly. But he said nothing. Sbnplicissimus, in 
 one of its cartoons, replaced the imperial eagle 
 over the entrance to the Foreign Office by another 
 bird, not famed for discretion. And then, one
 
 "S. M." 39 
 
 morning, through a miracle of sudden enlighten 
 ment, the German people perceived with a gasp 
 that the greatest defeats of the Kaiser were vic 
 tories in disguise. 
 
 And yet the Kaiser is not a hypocrite. He is 
 temperamentally incapable of deceit. But there is 
 no explanation. We must simply accept him as 
 two distinct personalities. He is monarchical to the 
 bone. Yet it was he who opposed Bismarck's anti- 
 Socialist legislation. He is the official head of the 
 Protestant church in Prussia, yet Roman ritual and 
 Rome possesses for him a strange fascination. 
 He loves pomp, but his children are reared with 
 bourgeois simplicity. His preoccupation is war; 
 he, nevertheless, is the stanchest champion of 
 peace. He hates the English, and he loves the 
 English. He is a mystic and a rationalist. His 
 inclinations are mediaeval, but he is more inti 
 mately familiar with the technical intricacies of a 
 modern gunboat than are his own engineers. He 
 would be capable of restoring an ancient castle, 
 famed of minnesingers, and of establishing wire 
 less telephony on its ramparts. He is the only man 
 who could do this without being absurd, because 
 he is, as I have asserted, the sole legitimate off 
 spring of Romanticism and Modernity. 
 
 Of his two natures, one belongs to the Twenti 
 eth Century, one to the Middle Ages. One is des 
 potic, one democratic. One hates the English, one 
 loves them. One talks freely, perhaps too freely;
 
 40 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 one is silent as the sepulcher. The Inquisition it 
 self was not more secretive. Peace lights on his 
 right, hounds of war are leashed to his left. There 
 are two Kaisers, both of whom labor for the bene 
 fit of the realm, each in his separate way. 
 
 By this duality William II is the authen 
 tic exponent of modern Europe. In Europe to 
 day the war between Science and Faith wages 
 more fiercely than ever. The wolf of Modernism 
 has invaded even the fold of St. Peter. The lives 
 of most Europeans are absurd because they have 
 not yet found the equation between the Old and 
 the New. Faith and Science live unreconciled, 
 in one bosom, like two inimical brothers. Even 
 we who are a century behind European thought 
 begin to vibrate with the conflict. Perhaps Pro 
 fessor James is the prophet who shall lead us out 
 of the wilderness. 
 
 A parallel problem is presented in Europe by 
 the incessant conflict between the monarchical idea 
 and republicanism. Mediaeval institutions co 
 exist with democratic institutions. It seems pre 
 posterous that people who can think for them 
 selves should not also govern themselves. Yet no 
 small part of the strength of Europe roots in the 
 mediaeval. Something of this struggle, modified 
 by our environment, is going on in America. The 
 government in Washington steadily tightens its 
 grip, while the steer of democracy raises its omi 
 nous horns.
 
 "S. M." 41 
 
 We live in a curiously transitional period. 
 Probably authentic democracy lies at the end of 
 the road. I should prefer some transfigured 
 aristocracy. The greatest individual development 
 is perhaps possible under a cultured tyrant. He is 
 the man of destiny. His brain is the scroll of the 
 Zeitgeist. 
 
 Most modern monarchs compromise either too 
 much or too little. Great Britain having disposed 
 of the only logical basis of royalty, the divine 
 right of kings, her ruler exercises primarily an 
 ornamental, aesthetic function. The Tsar, on the 
 other hand, entrenched behind prejudice and tra 
 dition, lives in constant dread of nitro-glycerine 
 protests. The problem facing the world to-day is 
 the readjustment between the passing order and 
 the new order. The mental unrest has invaded 
 even Asia Minor. When Abdul Hamid vainly 
 tortured his wits for a solution to the question 
 vexing the world, the monster, Sphinx-like, hurled 
 him into the abyss. 
 
 The giant Modernity everywhere shakes his 
 fist against the lavendered glory of mediaeval tra 
 dition, impotent to obliterate its immemorial 
 traces. William II is the living incarnation of this 
 great contradiction. He is logical, because he is 
 illogical. He is the only logical monarch in Eu 
 rope. He is an ideal Kaiser. He is in tune with 
 the Zeitgeist. If Germany were to be declared a 
 republic to-day, and a president had to be chosen,
 
 42 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the unanimous choice of the people would be 
 William II. 
 
 America could never have produced William 
 II. We lack the glamor of the Middle Ages. We 
 have inherited only their shadows their intoler 
 ance of the flesh and their hatred of beauty. Not 
 ours the halo of tradition. We have sometimes 
 compared the Kaiser to Roosevelt. I, myself, am 
 an admirer of Roosevelt. But to liken him to the 
 Kaiser is like comparing a phonograph to a night 
 ingale. It may imitate the nightingale bravely, 
 but there is something missing. No mechanical 
 ingenuity can conceal its absence. There must be 
 some secret property defying investigation, like 
 the timbre of an old instrument perhaps some 
 quality of the blood. 
 
 I wonder if the blood of kings is really like 
 other men's? What a pity no one took the trouble 
 to examine the blood of Louis Capet when he 
 parted company with his head ! Perhaps it was not 
 blue, after all. We would need a psychic micro 
 scope to discover the truth. We know that a king's 
 head may be wrung like a carl's. Even imperial 
 legs grow heavy with gout. And the abdomen is 
 dreadfully democratic. As Nietzsche says, it al 
 ways reminds us that we are human. But the 
 brain, ah ! that is different. Not anatomically. A 
 woman's brain is almost as large as a man's. And 
 wasn't it Lombroso who couldn't tell, on one occa 
 sion, the brain of a genius from that of an idiot?
 
 "S. M." 43 
 
 But there is something else. There must be. It 
 lurks in the brain-cells. Some memory the real 
 self. A brain where the notion of the divine 
 right of monarchs has been rooting for genera 
 tions must be different from the brains of 
 other men. 
 
 No mean man, it is said, has ever been Presi 
 dent. The majesty of the office is such that, like 
 Christ, it heals the leper. Even a confirmed klep 
 tomaniac will renounce his nefarious habits when 
 fate has made him lord of the White House. Yet 
 the President's reign is brief. He is often elected 
 by doubtful methods. The King receives his 
 crown out of the hand of God. It has descended 
 to him from his sires. It will pass from him to 
 his sons. He is porphyrogene. He rules not for 
 a period of years, but forever. The King cannot 
 die. In the animal kingdom, the insignia of roy 
 alty are corporeal. The queen-bee differs from her 
 hive in appearance. Human distinctions are 
 subtler, but no less real. Any young bee may, if 
 sufficiently fed, develop into a queen. Generations 
 of careful selection are needed to evolve a ruler 
 of men. The king, of necessity, differs from his 
 people. The process of evolution has endowed 
 him with peculiar functions for the business of 
 kingship. This heritage alone would have 
 stamped William II as a remarkable ruler. But 
 he is also a genius. 
 
 " William II," one of his intimate friends im-
 
 44 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 pressed upon me with conviction, " would have 
 been conspicuous in any profession. If a cobbler, 
 he would have been a master cobbler." He is 
 versatile, myriad-minded strategist, poet, musi 
 cian, diplomatist, huntsman, painter and engineer. 
 Nero tried his hand at some of these things. But 
 it cost him his head. Frederick the Great dabbled 
 in verse. But it was wretched verse. The Kaiser's 
 endeavors in manifold fields would have made sev 
 eral reputations for men of lesser caliber. But 
 he still remains, above all, the Kaiser. 
 
 The Prussia of Frederick the Great was less 
 isolated than the German Empire in certain crit 
 ical periods under the present regime. To-day 
 she plays the leading fiddle in the Concert of Pow 
 ers. The luminous figure of William II domi 
 nates the earth. The shadow of his sword para 
 lyzes the British lion. But, unlike Frederick the 
 Great, William the Great has accomplished his 
 victories without bloodshed. For one and twenty 
 years he has been Lord of Peace. The Seven 
 Years' War was surely a wonderful thing. But 
 what shall we say to a three times Seven Years' 
 Peace? 
 
 Germany is divided into two camps: those who 
 follow the Kaiser blindly, and those who oppose 
 him blindly. There is no neutral ground. I have 
 a sneaking suspicion that even the Socialists se 
 cretly adore William II. If Bebel were the Chief 
 Executive of a German Democracy, he would
 
 " S. M." 45 
 
 make the Kaiser his Chancellor. Even the Oppo 
 sition draws its life from the negation of him. 
 
 The Kaiser's personal charm is more potent 
 than that of Circe. Unlike Circe, he turns his ad 
 mirers not into swine, but into patriots. Like 
 Julius Caesar, William II can be all things to all 
 men. He is a brilliant conversationalist, and as 
 he listens to you he seems to enter into your mind. 
 Yet all the while, his mind is a garrisoned fort 
 ress. The portals are closely guarded. Never 
 a word passes his lips unchallenged. Caution is 
 posted on the tip of his tongue. That, I believe, 
 is the secret of rulers of men. 
 
 It is almost incredible what sacrifices Germans, 
 hard men of business, will make for one smile from 
 his imperial lips. There is August Scherl, the Ger 
 man newspaper king. Mr. Scherl controls the 
 syndicate publishing the Berlin Lokalanzeiger. 
 Formerly this sheet might have been designated 
 as ultra-yellow. Suddenly Mr. Scherl reverses 
 his policy, and deliberately makes his paper, 
 politically, the dullest in Berlin. The whisper had 
 reached his ear that the Emperor read it: let no 
 offensive opinion provoke a wrinkle on His 
 Majesty's forehead! The circulation, however, 
 continued to soar. Suppressing its yawns, Berlin 
 still religiously peruses the Lokalanzeiger' s cas 
 trated pages. ' You see," the German explains, 
 half apologetically, half with the pardonable 
 pride of sharing, in a sense, the mental pabulum
 
 46 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 of his ruler, " S. JM. reads it; I. M. (Ihre 
 Majestat, Her Majesty), also." 
 
 And yet it is all a myth. Far be it from me to 
 affirm that the Kaiser never reads the Lokalan- 
 zeiger. He is indeed an omnivorous reader. All 
 the new magazines find their way to his table. His 
 desk is strewn with a bewildering variety of pub 
 lications. Sometimes, no doubt, he even sees 
 August Bebel's radical mouthpiece, the Forwdrts. 
 It is all nonsense, of course, that his news-dis 
 patches are "doctored." William II would brook 
 no such interference. He picks up information 
 wherever he likes. But being a busy man, he has 
 his news " romeiked," to employ a new verb, 
 coined, I believe, by Richard Le Gallienne. The 
 Wilhelmstrasse supplies him regularly with clip 
 pings on every imaginable topic of interest. And 
 finally the Fiirstenkorrespondenz, a sort of Liter 
 ary Digest for Princes, supplies him with the 
 epitome of the daily news and excerpts from edi 
 torials. I do not think, however, that he lets that 
 brilliant but venomous reptile, the Zukunft, coil 
 up on his desk. 
 
 The mention of Maximilian Harden's unmen 
 tionable magazine recalls to my mind one of the 
 blackest chapters in the history of the German 
 people. Harden's one object in life has been to 
 play the advocatus diaboli to William II. At the 
 time of the Eulenburg scandal and subsequently, 
 when the Kaiser's Anglophile interview exploded
 
 " S. M." 47 
 
 with bomb-like concussion, it seemed almost as 
 if the editor of the Zukunft had planted his 
 sting. The cyclonic excitement over the interview 
 was largely the after-effect of Harden's revela 
 tions concerning the alleged " camarilla." 
 
 The so-called " camarilla " owes its existence 
 solely to the gossip of demagogues and of lackeys. 
 The " Round Table " is a malicious invention. 
 Men of Prince zu Eulenburg's temperament are 
 found frequently in all walks of life. Like many 
 obviously minor poets, he is incurably romantic. It 
 is only natural that he should have been attracted, 
 as the moth to the flame; by the splendid and virile 
 personality of the monarch whom he served with 
 mediaeval devotion. Count Kuno von Moltke is 
 a man of culture in the sense of the author of 
 Marius the Epicurean. He has Nietzsche and 
 Goethe at his finger-tips. Harden needlessly and 
 unjustly dragged his name through the mire, 
 wrecking his happiness to no purpose. 
 
 Eulenburg's case is still undecided. He seems 
 to have stumbled over a breath a word call 
 it perjury if you will. Harden's clever journal 
 istic machinations have spread the erroneous im 
 pression that he has proved his case: he hasn't. 
 Eulenburg, hounded almost to death by Harden's 
 sensational persecution, may never again be able 
 to speak in his own defense. Harden, however, 
 stands morally convicted of treason to his country, 
 and, incidentally, to his own scientific convictions.
 
 48 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 He has passed judgment upon himself. His 
 weekly mental acrobatics, scorned by the truly 
 elect, serve to amuse only the intellectual gallery. 
 To the majority of the German public he is no 
 longer a martyr. The shield of the Hohenzol- 
 lern gleams brighter than ever. His absolute inde 
 pendence of irresponsible advisers and his political 
 sagacity are no longer questioned. 
 
 Like Frederick the Great in his time, William 
 II is the cynosure of the world. His seal is graven 
 upon the Book of Life perhaps more deeply than 
 Bismarck's. Still, there must be bitterness in his 
 heart when he remembers the immediate past. I 
 thought of it in Potsdam when I retraced the steps 
 of his great progenitor. 
 
 Potsdam, the Kaiser's favorite residence, is inti 
 mately associated with memories of Frederick the 
 Great. It means much more to the German than 
 Washington's headquarters means to us. Wash 
 ington had many headquarters. His appetite, ap 
 parently, was terrific. He seems to have stopped 
 at every road-house between New York and 
 Philadelphia, and to have slept in innumerable 
 places. 
 
 The picturesque is conspicuously absent in our 
 history. We haven't much of a history, anyway. 
 There is the story of the Cherry Tree and the 
 Declaration of Independence, a couple of wars, 
 and Lincoln's assassination. For me, American 
 history begins with Poe, not with Plymouth; not
 
 "S. M." 49 
 
 with the Constitution, but with Annabel Lee. 
 Everything seems too near. We are dreadfully 
 unromantic. Perhaps that is the reason why na 
 tive historical art fails to impress us. Who would 
 be moved by the statue of the Father of his Coun 
 try, standing in what seems to be a bathing suit, on 
 top of a pole in the Capital? 
 
 Frederick the Great and Washington were con 
 temporaries. I cannot think of Washington with 
 out smiling. 
 
 In Potsdam I felt the weight of the centuries, 
 and that a wonderful spirit had dwelt there. 
 The little house where lived Voltaire, his dearest 
 literary friend, somehow gave me a curious thrill. 
 And with a chuckle I thought of the cruel things 
 he said about Frederick's verse. 
 
 I mounted the terrace that leads to the unpre 
 tentious hall where Frederick himself had pre 
 sided over his minions, smoking tobacco and say 
 ing acute things in French. And I saw in the twi 
 light the pool on which Frederick had set his 
 heart, and which had never been completed in his 
 lifetime, owing to the miscalculations of a stupid 
 contractor. And there, in the shadow beyond, was 
 the Historic Mill, whose owner had flaunted de 
 fiance in the face of the King. How they all 
 hampered him in little things the philosopher, 
 and the miller, and the rascal who made a mess 
 of the pool I How like their descendants ! 
 
 Night had fallen over the trees. Wistfully the
 
 50 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 moon smiled from above. Through the green 
 foliage peered the pallid faces of statues, archers 
 and Ganymedes, and delicate breasts bathed in 
 moonlight. Seven little tombstones beckoned and 
 gleamed from afar. ' These," remarked my com 
 panion, like myself an admirer of Frederick the 
 Great, " these are the graves of his greyhounds. 
 Despairing of men, he turned for solace to them." 
 
 Frederick had ordained in his will that the 
 faithful hounds should be buried at his side. Even 
 that last wish was denied him. To me, these 
 graves are the most pathetic things in the world. 
 In the history of sorrow there is no page more sor 
 rowful and more sweet. I wonder if the Kaiser 
 sometimes thinks of Frederick and his grey 
 hounds? 
 
 All great men are sad at heart. I can imagine 
 the Kaiser, wrapped in a military cloak, standing 
 there of a night and evoking in spirit the seven 
 little ghosts of the hounds. Germany has forgot 
 ten how in a moment of hysterical agitation she 
 trod his love underfoot. William II is great 
 enough to forget. But surely, sometimes, like 
 the smart of an old wound, the memory comes to 
 him by the seven little graves in the gardens of 
 Potsdam.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 
 
 SOMEWHERE in Germany there is a warrant 
 sworn out for my apprehension. Somewhere the 
 Public Prosecutor peers across the sea with a spy 
 glass. The German Empire, strangely enough, 
 regards me still as her subject. She clings to me 
 with the tenacity of a woman. I think she accuses 
 me of desertion. A uniform, spick and span, and 
 with brass buttons, is waiting for me. But I don't 
 want it. I'd rather wear my blue serge suit. And, 
 of course, it's all a mistake. I have politely in 
 formed Madame that I am an American citizen, 
 and that she can not, can really not, count upon me. 
 
 It isn't surprising that she carries my name on 
 her list. It seems I was born between 1884 and 
 1885 i n tne city f Munich. The event is said to 
 have occurred on New Year's Eve. So, in a way, I 
 have fallen between two stools. Future historians 
 will have small difficulty in proving that I wasn't 
 born at all. I don't want to be too definite about 
 it. The lives of poets should be delightfully 
 vague. The greatest poets are shrouded in mys 
 tery. The author of Shakespeare's plays, it seems, 
 
 51
 
 52 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 never existed. And seven cities vie for the honor 
 of having given birth to a person named Homer, 
 who is alleged to have written the Iliad. 
 
 Let two continents wrestle for me. 
 
 Henceforth shall I shun the detective camera. 
 Like d'Annunzio, I shall sleep in the daytime. I 
 shall endeavor to become a mythical figure like 
 Bernard Shaw. All the elect know Bernard Shaw 
 doesn't exist. It is horribly indiscreet of me to 
 say so, but he is really a hoax. He invented him 
 self. That is one of the reasons why he persist 
 ently refuses to startle the United States with his 
 enigmatical presence. All the world loves a bluffer 
 at least in America. We have raised humbug 
 to a fine art. But we are quick to discern it. Shaw 
 is afraid we'd find out that he is merely a resus 
 citated epigram of the late Oscar Wilde, dropped 
 by mistake in a volume of Marx. 
 
 Already an aura of myths surrounds my head 
 with a nebulous halo. I shall be a legendary fig 
 ure before I die. That is the reason why I have 
 deliberately courted a bad reputation. It is a 
 valuable asset for a poet of passion. When Swin 
 burne lost it by moving to Putney Hill with Mr. 
 Watts Dunton, the savor went out of his song. I 
 am convinced I shall never lose my evil glamor. 
 I have builded too well for that. And an hun 
 dred hands were stretched out to help me. Even 
 if I weary, my friends, I feel sure, will persist in 
 supporting the tottering structure.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 53 
 
 I need not dwell here upon the now historical 
 fact that my mother is a native of California. 
 Years before my nativity my father made a lec 
 ture tour through the country. The date of my 
 first appearance here I have never been able to 
 verify with precision. Who's Who places it at 
 the age of eleven. And through all the elapsing 
 years some German magistrate's scribe has consci 
 entiously traced my footprints. Surely the mills 
 of the Government grind exceeding small ! 
 
 One night I was dined at the house of one of 
 the Big Wigs of the German War Ministry. My 
 host, cultured and genial, like all German officers, 
 talked interestingly of the army. I asked him 
 whether he knew of any general philosophic ex 
 position of militarism. He gave me some books 
 on the subject, which I subsequently pondered 
 with care. I know now how to marshal an army, 
 and how to build bridges across a river, besides 
 various strategic devices. But my knowledge is 
 theoretical, like a young poet's knowledge of sin. 
 And I nowhere discovered the theory of militarism, 
 the philosophic defense of the thing. After all, 
 nothing that exists needs a defense. Pope was 
 right about that. 
 
 Of course, it seems preposterous that people 
 should be drilled to riddle each other with bullets. 
 I, for one, don't believe in it. Life to me is a 
 sacred thing. Besides, I'd be afraid to handle a 
 gun. I'd rather have a broken heart than a tooth-
 
 54 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 ache. Still, Good, like Evil, inheres in all things. 
 I agree with the Persians who divided the cosmos 
 equally between God and the Devil. We must 
 accept both, and then establish our personal equi 
 librium. That, it seems to me, is the art of living. 
 Militarism is not wholly the work of the Devil. 
 I cannot picture the Goddess of Peace without a 
 sword. The olive branch of the dove should 
 really be a torpedo. To the German mind no such 
 justification is needed. It is as natural to the Ger 
 man to serve in the army as it is to be born; and 
 those who do not serve might as well never have 
 been born. 
 
 One year's compulsory military service is a salu 
 tary experience. Most of us are neglectful of ex 
 ercise. We develop certain sets of muscles, but 
 there is little general training even among college 
 athletes. Systematic and rigorous physical train 
 ing at a critical age is worth more than millions. 
 The Emperor's service, moreover, keeps the 
 young male, if not out of mischief, at least out of 
 marriage, until the white fires of adolescence sober 
 into the steady warmth of connubial affection. 
 " But," you say, " time is money." Twelve vital 
 months are canceled from your accounts! Yet I 
 should hardly consider them a loss, but a profit 
 able investment, bearing an interest of one thou 
 sand per cent. Medical authorities have carefully 
 calculated that compulsory military service length 
 ens the German average of life by ten years.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 55 
 
 H. G. Wells, in one of his yarns, tells of a Time 
 Savings Bank, where futile hours may be de 
 posited, to be drawn upon when necessity or de 
 light prompts us to lengthen the day. I have 
 vainly searched in financial directories for this 
 unique institution. Even J. P. Morgan, master of 
 destinies and of millions, cannot purchase a single 
 minute from Father Time. No Wall Street oper 
 ator can corner this market. Military service is 
 the only practical Time Savings Bank in exist 
 ence. After the first substantial deposit, the di 
 rectors exact small periodic payments when mili 
 tary maneuvers mimic the ire of Mars. Soon ex 
 penditures cease altogether, but at the end of your 
 life or what would have been the end you 
 can live on the interest. 
 
 It has been said that the Prussian schoolmaster 
 won the battles of Frederick the Great. The 
 German army to-day is a national school. Every 
 company is a school class, with recruits as pupils, 
 and officers as instructors. The officers, in turn, 
 receive instruction from their superiors, and the 
 War Academy in Berlin furnishes, so to speak, 
 special post-graduate courses in warfare. Mili 
 tary service is said to increase the efficiency of the 
 young German by twenty-five per cent. Rustic 
 swains return to their homes with new ideas. 
 They learn to apply themselves systematically. 
 They learn manners, respect for their intellectual 
 betters. And, incidentally, also, the use of soap.
 
 5 6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 The young soldier is a powerful factor in Ger 
 man aesthetics. He is a splash of color on the 
 gray face of the world. His glittering uniform 
 and his bluish cloak, artistically lined with red, are 
 an eloquent plea against insipid civilian Fashion, 
 which has banished gaiety in masculine attire to 
 the comic opera stage. There is nobility in his 
 carriage. His eyes flash fire. He is handsome, 
 being healthy, young, and, in the beginning at 
 least, clean-shaven. 
 
 There is something distinctly animalic in 
 bearded faces. Perhaps that is the reason why 
 some women succumb to their spell. The beast in 
 the female responds to the simian reminiscence 
 atavistic, no doubt in the male. To me, a 
 bearded man suggests the ancient Assyrian. The 
 dust of the ages seems to nestle in the hirsute pro 
 jection. I would not be at all surprised if a scar- 
 abasus, startled at a touch, were to creep from its 
 somber recesses. Young men should shave clean. 
 Later, when sin and sorrow have dug holes in 
 their cheeks and the years have distorted their 
 lips, it is perhaps well that they should hide 
 their wasted loveliness under a growth of hair. 
 
 I have no aesthetic objection to flowing beards 
 in old men, and to a mustache in a father. I 
 couldn't imagine my own father without one. 
 The well developed mustache may epitomize mas 
 culine maturity and completeness. But the frag 
 mentary, tooth-brush-like growth many young
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 57 
 
 Germans affect on their upper lip is perfectly 
 hideous. A young German teacher confided to 
 me that he had grown a beard in order to impress 
 his pupils with a sense of his dignity. He has the 
 face of a cherub, yet he makes himself look like 
 a goat! 
 
 Soldiers are garrisoned, as a rule, far from 
 their homes. Regiments are frequently shifted. 
 The soldier thus comes in touch with various parts 
 of the country. Everywhere he acquires new 
 knowledge. He learns to see his own com 
 munity in its proper perspective. The oneness of 
 the Fatherland dawns upon him. It is an object- 
 lesson in patriotism. 
 
 In the past, at least, maneuvers were held al 
 ternately in various spots of the country with 
 unavowed ethnic intentions. Some villages, far 
 from the high road, were degenerating. Inter 
 marriages between relatives were the rule. 
 Hydrocephalous children were not infrequent. 
 The presence of the soldiers injected new blood 
 into the shriveled veins of the hamlet. The stork 
 followed frequently. Marriages sometimes. 
 " Nice " people won't approve of this. But it is 
 defensible from the viewpoint of racial ethics. Na 
 ture isn't moral, and she has a trick of not waiting 
 for magisterial permits. 
 
 The modern railway has largely supplanted the 
 necessity for this system, but it is still a factor in 
 racial development. Remember that all able-
 
 58 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 bodied young men are pressed into service, and 
 that they are scattered all over the country. The 
 glad blood leaps in their veins. Courtships are 
 spun everywhere. Many return to wed where 
 they wooed. It is fascinating to reflect how the 
 administrative process that carries young manhood 
 from province to province furnishes a striking 
 parallel to the function of the wind, love-courier 
 from garden to garden in the vegetable domain. 
 
 In the ranks of the officers, aristocratic titles 
 prevail. In some regiments only blue blood is ac 
 cepted at par. The growing power of the bour 
 geoisie, however, is shattering this feudal barrier. 
 I am not democratic, and I cannot say that I hail 
 the change with delight. There is much to be said 
 for blue blood, and old titles, and families with 
 traditions. We estimate a horse by its pedigree, 
 and we value the family tree of a puppy-dog. The 
 same laws of heredity and evolution surely apply 
 to humans. Nobility is the pillar of state and 
 throne. What I have said of the institution of 
 monarchy applies with equal force to the noble. 
 His subsistence to-day is incongruous. But life 
 itself is pregnant with contradictions. 
 
 The aristocrat, no doubt, frequently falls short 
 of his standards. But his standards are fine. Not 
 long ago, a cousin of mine, a young lieutenant, 
 scion of one of the oldest families in the country, 
 committed suicide because his superior officer had 
 censured him for some trivial misunderstanding.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 59 
 
 His sense of honor was so acutely developed that 
 a word of disapprobation was a death-warrant. 
 Foolish, perhaps. The boy was high-strung, un 
 balanced. 
 
 Recently an American officer was tried before 
 a court-martial for a flagrantly dishonorable act. 
 The sentence passed upon him, being absurdly 
 light, was subsequently overturned by the com- 
 mander-in-chief. A mistaken sense of esprit de 
 corps seems to have blinded his judges. What 
 ever their motives, whose code of honor was 
 higher, theirs or the dead lad's? To whom would 
 we rather entrust the safety of a country? 
 
 The incident, presumably, is not symptomatic. 
 Our officers, I am convinced, are as honorable as 
 any. In Germany, however, certain canons of 
 honor are established immutably. The duel is 
 partly responsible for the German rigor, barbar 
 ous at times, in matters relating to honor. It is 
 not a purely military institution, but a practice 
 sanctioned by academic tradition. Insult is not 
 passed over lightly among Germans. We freely 
 hurl, at least in print, insulting epithets at each 
 other. We may not blacken a person's eye, but 
 we blacken his reputation. Yet every time we call 
 a public servant a thief or a liar, the moral stand 
 ard is lowered. If the president is a liar and the 
 governor a thief, crime seems innocuous. Through 
 constant reiteration, first the word, then the thing 
 itself, impresses us more lightly. Our libel laws
 
 60 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 are inefficient. The use of the fist is unsatisfactory, 
 especially as moral heroes are apt to be under 
 sized. A sword scratch is wildly romantic; a 
 bloody nose isn't. 
 
 The army, in spite of the preference given in 
 some regiments to titled officers, is a republican 
 institution. It is more democratic than Bebel. 
 There is nothing more democratic. Military ser 
 vice, being incumbent upon all, temporarily levels 
 distinctions of caste. Once they wear " the Em 
 peror's coat," prince and peasant are equals. Even 
 princes of the blood are not spared the tribula 
 tions of the poorest lieutenant. Any tendency to 
 uppishness is promptly suppressed. 
 
 Where officers and privates belong to the same 
 class, cordial relations are irreconcilable with eti 
 quette. The German officer can afford to make 
 himself democratic, because he is not, so to speak, 
 one of the common people. He cannot lose caste 
 socially by mixing with them as comrades. I re 
 member walking down Unter den Linden with my 
 military friend. Every time a common soldier 
 saluted, and it happened with embarrassing fre 
 quency, he courteously returned the salute. He 
 had instructed his subordinate officers to be equally 
 attentive. And every salute was a renewed asser 
 tion of the unity of the grandiose machinery in 
 which general and private, each in his own way, 
 are of equal importance. 
 
 I am an individualist. Yet there are moments
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 61 
 
 when it is sweet to grow out of the shell of self. 
 There is, perhaps, dangerous intoxication in 
 crowds; to be swayed by the common impulse 
 when the mysterious force psychologists call 
 " mass suggestion " sweeps through the channels 
 of the brain, breaking the flood-gates of mental 
 reserve. Such must be the soldier's experience in 
 war or some great maneuver. Think of a million 
 young souls swearing fealty to one flag, made one 
 by the ties of comradeship and obedience, and a 
 new sense of brotherhood born of common experi 
 ence! 
 
 All the vitality of the nation is there. Passion 
 and youth, brawn and brain, are enthralled by one 
 dominant purpose. How irresistible is this 
 phalanx! What an immense force! What 
 strange hysteria ! Only Walt Whitman could de 
 pict such emotions, cosmic and sensuous. Even 
 the most confirmed egotist forgets his subjective 
 existence. His heart for the nonce beats in unison 
 with the world's. He is one with the race and the 
 earth. Earth-emotions, Titanic and terrifying, 
 throb in his veins. He can perform miracles of 
 endurance and valor. 
 
 Henceforth, if his country calls, he will blindly 
 follow her summons. He will love the Father 
 land with a love intensely personal, as one loves a 
 woman. He has experienced an emotion deeper 
 than patriotism, fiercer than lust. Future and past 
 have met in one glance. A subtle change is
 
 62 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 wrought within his being. He is the citizen trans 
 figured. Never again will he be quite what he 
 has been like a child who, having strayed in 
 the wold, has had converse with fairies. Like 
 the lover to whom passion has revealed its ulti 
 mate secret. Like the prophet who has seen ,God 
 in a bush.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 
 
 GERMANY is an inspired bureaucracy. Her real 
 ruler is the bureaucrat. His impress is every 
 where. We generally associate the bureaucrat 
 with the pedant. Frenchmen run to lechery. Am 
 ericans incline to graft. Pedantry is the German 
 vice. It might have become the national poison, 
 had not William II injected the potent antidote of 
 his individualism into the body politic. The men 
 at the helm of German affairs to-day have main 
 tained the Prussian tradition of strict adherence 
 to duty. But their horizon has widened. Sus 
 tained, not ossified by routine, they follow the star 
 of the new. 
 
 I have met four Ministers of State, four Am 
 bassadors, one sovereign Burgomaster, " Excel 
 lencies " by the score, and Privy Councilors in 
 numerable. Everywhere I found alertness and 
 life. There was, on the whole, little " red tape." 
 If we elect a vital personality to office, and we 
 feel that for once we have a man, not a marion 
 ette, we bubble over with enthusiasm and are loath 
 to lose him even temporarily in the African jungle. 
 
 63
 
 64 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 In Germany every bureau has its Roosevelt. Few 
 but the Inner Circle know their names. They 
 claim no public credit for their achievements. 
 Unadvertised and unsung, they plod away at their 
 desks. But their plans are accomplished, their 
 dreams projected. 
 
 A man of this type, a mind fascinatingly radio 
 active, was the late Friedrich AlthofL The Min 
 istry of Culture, to render the spirit, not the let 
 ter, of the original term, was the center of his 
 ceaseless radiation. Strenuous, autocratic, he 
 ruled with an iron rod. It is said that the Kaiser 
 himself made concessions to him that he would not 
 have made to a fellow-sovereign. There was no 
 grandiose scheme of reform in which he was not 
 a participant. No vital idea was left orphaned 
 and begging on the steps of his office. In his 
 bureau the most vital educational idea of the cen 
 tury, the international exchange of intellectual 
 commodities, stepped full-fledged from a profes 
 sional cerebrum. Althoff adopted the waif; he 
 nourished it and sustained it. Who was its father 
 we shall never know. I am personally acquainted 
 with at least four claimants to that distinction. 
 If I give the palm to any I shall mortally offend 
 the rest. 
 
 Applying the Napoleonic code, let us not, there 
 fore, inquire into the paternite. It was Althoff, 
 at any rate, who built the bridge for the 
 foundling across the Atlantic. Every professor
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 65 
 
 traversing the ocean is a living monument to this 
 remarkable man. 
 
 Yet, so little known was this inspired bureau 
 crat outside of his circle that his death passed 
 unnoticed by the American press. The first Kaiser 
 Wilhelm Professor, John W. Burgess, had not 
 heard of the occurrence until he received a letter 
 from a mutual friend. 
 
 Althoff's spirit still hovers over the ministry, as 
 Bismarck's over the Foreign Office. If Bismarck 
 consolidated his country's political strength, it re 
 mains Althoff's distinction to have conquered the 
 New World intellectually; at least, to have opened 
 to the German mind the citadels of our universi 
 ties, where formerly only brave pioneers like 
 Hugo Mu'nsterberg and Kuno Francke had 
 gained isolated footholds. Conquests of peace, 
 unlike conquests of war, are of mutual benefit to 
 conqueror and vanquished, and the gates of Ger 
 man universities swing graciously open to invaders 
 from the American side. Althoff's spirit abides in 
 the American Institute founded after his death in 
 the capital of the Kaiser. Surely bureaucracy has 
 its victories, and education its Bismarcks. 
 
 Our Commissioner of Education, our nearest 
 approach to the German Kultusminister, is prac 
 tically powerless. His German colleague has a 
 firm grip on matters of religion, education and art. 
 In the body politic the Ministry of Culture may be 
 compared with the soul. The amount of work
 
 66 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 transacted in the humble building situated, if I 
 rightly remember, at the intersection of the Wil- 
 helmstrasse and Unter den Linden, is hardly 
 credible. From morning until night the ante 
 rooms are crowded with foreign visitors and pro 
 fessorial aspirants. I have seen the Man Higher 
 Up still at work at half-past nine in the evening. 
 His bureau is an intellectual telephone-central 
 where all the wires converge. If we had a new 
 idea, we should never dream of inviting the co 
 operation of a government official. In Germany 
 all new ideas are submitted to official sanction, and 
 vital ideas are not often rejected. 
 
 The German professor receives his inspiration 
 largely from the Minister of Culture. His position 
 is curiously hybrid. He is part of the bureaucratic 
 system, yet intellectually independent. Those who 
 direct affairs at the Ministry are hidden from 
 public sight. The professor, however, as the Man 
 Higher Up explained to me, stands between them 
 and the world. The modern German professor 
 has nothing in common with the type made familiar 
 to all through the Fliegende Blatter. He is a 
 practical man, alive to the call of the age. There 
 is nothing of the academic fossil about him. He 
 is human, ambitious, and often a man of brilliant 
 intellectual attainment. We labor under the im 
 pression that his remuneration is scant. We cer 
 tainly underpay our professors. The income of the 
 German professor I understand to be princely com-
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 67 
 
 pared with that of his American compeer. In ad 
 dition to his salary, he receives a certain tithe from 
 the students attending his lectures. Popular lec 
 turers are known thus to have increased their 
 stipends by from forty to fifty thousand marks in 
 a single year. They are officers in that army of 
 culture of which the Kultusminister is the com- 
 mander-in-chief. 
 
 Not far from the Kultus minis terium we find 
 the Foreign Office. The cluster of buildings har 
 boring this department may fitly be likened to the 
 brain in the anatomy of the State. Here are con 
 ceived the political scores, which through the joint 
 instrumentation of the Kaiser and his advisers have 
 made Germany the bandmaster in the Concert of 
 Nations. It is not often that a false note is 
 sounded. German diplomacy frequently com 
 bines, with the genius of Richard Strauss, appar 
 ent dissonances into harmonies effective and start 
 ling. I have stated before that, in the opinion of 
 the super-wise, the Emperor's interview in the 
 London Telegraph was a brilliant stroke of diplo 
 macy to be justified by future events. At the same 
 time, there seems no doubt that bungling was not 
 absent from the matter. The fact in the case is 
 that the fateful manuscript was slipped by mistake 
 into the wrong portfolio. Some one was careless, 
 one cog was out of place, and the whole machinery 
 came apparently to a standstill. Not because it 
 was poorly organized, but because it was so splen-
 
 '68 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 didly organized. In such an exquisite machine, 
 the slightest break is fatal. 
 
 The Foreign Office is almost rustic in its trap 
 pings. The sofas and carpets in the reception- 
 room are positively shabby. No one who has ever 
 seen the inside of the Foreign Office can maintain 
 that Germany is not economical. A dentist's wait 
 ing-room is Oriental in luxury by comparison. 
 Still there is a certain charm in Imagining that 
 perhaps it was the ashes from Bismarck's pipe that 
 burned this hole in the carpet; that his Titanic 
 back rubbed the bloom from that couch. No 
 stenographer is employed in the political depart 
 ment. Never is the homely click of the typewriter 
 heard! In Downing Street the secretaries dictate 
 their letters into the ear of the phonograph; in 
 the Wilhelmstrasse high officials themselves write 
 their letters out in long-hand. Secrecy is bought 
 at the cost of convenience. Quarters are crowded. 
 Of comfort, of elegance, no trace. I feel that I 
 could not work in such a place unless I were at 
 least a privy councilor. If I were, surroundings 
 wouldn't matter. I wouldn't lose my self-respect 
 even in the humblest abode, supplied by a par 
 simonious government, because, after all, I would 
 myself be part of that government. 
 
 I wonder if such considerations account for the 
 German system of titles? There is to us some 
 thing funny in calling everybody by his bureau 
 cratic title, because we are ignorant of the eco-
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 69 
 
 nomic, ethical, aesthetic and social function of the 
 thing. The Geheimrat, or Privy Councilor, and 
 his varieties, people half the fashionable streets 
 of Berlin. He is easily recognizable by his long 
 frock coat, and the distinction with which he car 
 ries a portfolio under his arm. Some privy coun 
 cilors are apparently purely imaginary creatures. 
 For a distinction seems to be made between 
 " real " and " unreal " privy councilors. The for 
 mer, the " zvirkliche" has entered the bureaucratic 
 heaven; the mere privy councilor, like a soul un 
 born, hovers in the titular limbo. " Real " privy 
 councilors are addressed " Your Excellency," a 
 title also bestowed upon high military officials, 
 ambassadors and ministers. Rectors of universi 
 ties and burgomasters of sovereign cities are 
 called " Your Magnificence." 
 
 Even outside the sphere of bureaucracy, bureau 
 cratic customs prevail. Social life is impregnated 
 with its spirit. In addressing a person you label 
 him. The nightwatchman is Mr. Night Watch 
 man. His wife is referred to as Mrs. Night 
 Watchman. A Colonel's wife is Mrs. Colonel. 
 A doctor's wife Mrs. Doctor, although ladies who 
 have earned the title object to its use by females 
 not so distinguished. The title, it seems, estab 
 lishes a communion between husband and wife, 
 which even divorce cannot sever. I know of a lady 
 who, when she parted from her husband, was Mrs. 
 Lieutenant. When the rank of Colonel was ac-
 
 70 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 corded to him, she rose to the occasion. And I 
 have at this moment in my possession her visiting 
 card with the legend: " Mrs. General, Excellency." 
 
 It's rather hard at first to kowtow symbolically 
 every time you open your mouth, if you are a title- 
 less stranger. Which reminds me of the young 
 American who registered as Elector of New York, 
 and was received everywhere like a prince. My 
 father happens to be president of various societies; 
 he was introduced consequently to a lot of excel 
 lencies as " Mr. President." He never got rid of 
 the title. I am vice president of a publishing com 
 pany, and I have firmly made up my mind to adopt 
 that title the next time I travel abroad. The 
 porter will make innumerable genuflections as I 
 enter the hotel, and there will be an awesome 
 catch in the chambermaid's voice as she brings me 
 the coffee. 
 
 Besides, as I have said, the subject has a dis 
 tinctly economic aspect. Germany pays her offi 
 cials better than we do. But she cannot afford to 
 pay them nearly enough, considering that her most 
 brilliant men enter her service. In fact, money 
 alone could not pay them. And being an econom 
 ical lady, she compensates them with titles and 
 decorations. It is cheaper to endow an official 
 with a high title than to double his salary. 
 The title, more than any amount of money, deter 
 mines his social pre-eminence. If he be a poor 
 man, no one expects lavish entertainments of him.
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 71 
 
 The millionaire gladly trots up four flights to the 
 humble dwelling of the Herr Geheimrat. And a 
 cup of tea prepared in His Excellency's kitchen 
 goes to the head of the social climber like Asti 
 Spumanti. When a German officer in moderate 
 circumstances invites you to dinner, he doesn't at 
 tempt to show off. His rank insures his social 
 standing; he need not buy your respect with truf 
 fles, or cannonade the castle of caste with a battery 
 of champagne pops. These explanations were 
 given me by a Minister of State whose honorable 
 poverty exemplified the beauty of the system he 
 expounded. 
 
 A man who wears the ribbon of the Legion 
 of Honor will think twice before he participates 
 in a street brawl. The bearer of a distinguished 
 title will try to live up to that title. His social 
 privileges entail social duties. German officers are 
 not allowed to go out in civilian garb. The uni 
 form alone affords moral protection. Places of 
 evil association are barred to them. Their iden 
 tity can be ascertained at a glance. Like the alder 
 man in a small town, they've got to be good. And 
 there is always a stimulus in the hope of promo 
 tion: special merit receives special and visible 
 recognition. The philanthropist's energy will be 
 redoubled, if he knows that the eyes of his sov 
 ereign are resting upon him, and that he need not 
 wait for the next world before a reward comes to 
 him in the shape of some titular honor. We re-
 
 72 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 ward our millionaire philanthropists by cracking 
 jokes at their expense. The comic press is their 
 Hall of Fame. I am sure the fear of ridicule has 
 tightened the purse-strings of many a bashful Car 
 negie. That is one of the reasons why I, at any 
 rate, have never founded a museum. 
 
 The public is a doubting Thomas, and reputa 
 tion in art and science is an indeterminable factor. 
 A title, a decoration, assays a man's worth. 
 American society is afraid to receive the artist, and 
 ignores the scholar. Germany lends the title of 
 " professor " to distinguished artists, and, of 
 course, to distinguished scientists. That is their 
 passport. Great artists may dispense with it. 
 Men of Menzel's stamp need no passport beyond 
 that of genius. Still their path is made smoother 
 thereby. They are in less danger of being snubbed 
 by inferiors. And, of course, in Germany, a title 
 is a thing of very substantial value. A man who 
 assumes a title he has not earned is a thief, and is 
 punished accordingly. Professors of pedicure and 
 clairvoyance are unknown in Berlin. Titles, while 
 ungrudgingly given to those who have a right to 
 them, are sternly denied to fakirs. 
 
 We may regard inherited titles as absurd, but 
 titles earned by service are certainly sensible, one 
 may even say, democratic. It's the one chance of 
 the burgher to get even with the nobility. While 
 the system establishes a differential social tariff, it 
 creates no obstacle that cannot be overcome by
 
 INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 73 
 
 merit. And as the soldier's uniform lends patches 
 of color to the street, the titles devised by bureau 
 cracy brighten the salon. It's much more inter 
 esting to talk to a circle of privy councilors than 
 to be surrounded by a lot of Mr. Smiths and Mrs. 
 Somebodys. I don't blame our heiresses for want 
 ing to marry men of position and title. A simple 
 baron sheds some luster on social functions, and it 
 is incredible what sparkle the presence of an Ex 
 cellency lends to a lady's " At Home."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 
 
 LADIES and gentlemen, who have followed me 
 so far, are you not astounded at my conservatism? 
 I am. I described myself once as a conservative 
 Anarchist. I am afraid there is little of the An 
 archist in my composition to-day. Europe has 
 transformed and converted me. I have set my 
 face toward order. I fear that a suspicion of re 
 spectability always lurked in my heart. Of 
 course, people will never believe me. They 
 imagine that I live the life of an aesthetic tramp, 
 break up homes, and am continually in debt, 
 merely because my name is attached to certain 
 passional studies. A bank account, it seems, is ir 
 reconcilable with a poet of passion. 
 
 Dear souls, I am really a Philistine. I am scru 
 pulously honest, and as for wild oats, I have never 
 sown them. Poets, like the comets, those celestial 
 Bohemians, are privileged to deviate from their 
 orbits. My actions may at times contradict my 
 words. Do not, therefore, question my sincerity. 
 I certainly must refuse to live up to all the things 
 I am preaching. At the present, however, I be- 
 
 74
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 75 
 
 lieve in them. I have forsaken my radical affilia 
 tions. I have returned to the fold. But, alas, no 
 fatted calf is in sight. I made more money when 
 I was supposed to be wicked. 
 
 Having thus disposed of my morals, let us now 
 examine the morals of Europe. I see a look of 
 quickened interest in your eyes. You will be ter 
 ribly disappointed. In America we are accus 
 tomed to associate morality pre-eminently with 
 sex. Don Juan is to us the devil incarnate. We 
 regard a sexually continent man as a moral man. 
 We have no objection to his " correcting luck " in 
 financial affairs. Measured by American standards 
 Atys must have been a paragon of Virtue. And 
 the Sultan, too, is surrounded by virtuous men. 
 
 Sex has really nothing to do with morals. It 
 belongs to the sphere of passion; being natural, it 
 is unmoral. Loving, like dining, is not an ethical 
 function. The eunuch may be moral or immoral. 
 The Mormon likewise. There is no justification 
 for confusing ethical problems with physiological 
 problems. Love is never immoral, because it 
 necessarily implies mutual consent. Only where 
 that is absent, an erotic question becomes an ethical 
 question. Within the Golden Rule no amorous 
 experience can possibly be immoral. Thus, ex 
 cept in loveless marriages or in rape, ethical prob 
 lems rarely arise in the realm of passion. I shall 
 not, therefore, discuss Europe's sexual morality 
 under this heading.
 
 76 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 We, in America, regard Europe as immoral be 
 cause of a curious notion that sex, in itself, is im 
 moral. With the elimination of the sexual factor, 
 the morals of Europe are superior to ours. The 
 European's integrity in business, his sense of so 
 cial duty, and his firm adherence to an intangible 
 code of professional honor, thrown against our 
 American background, endow him with the halo 
 of saintship. I wonder if the insistence on ethical 
 and religious training abroad in public schools is 
 not, like militarism, a blessing in disguise. 
 
 We abhor the idea of injecting religious 
 instruction into our educational system, al 
 though, absurdly enough, we approve of indis 
 criminate Bible-readings in schools, irrespective of 
 the children's religious persuasions, and expect even 
 the atheist to swear in court on the Book. 
 
 You are a church-goer presumably. But I am 
 sure your religious notions are hazy. Perhaps 
 you go to church as to a social function. If you 
 had been brought up in Germany you would 
 know exactly what you believed and what you did 
 not believe. For one thing, you would have had 
 systematic religious training in school. And you 
 would have learned to apply your religion daily, 
 as you apply the multiplication table. Both Gen 
 tile and Jew are instructed by special teachers of 
 their own faith in the elements of their creed, as 
 they are instructed in geography and spelling. 
 When they grow up they will have to pay taxes
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 77 
 
 In support of the State Church or the Synagogue, 
 unless they formally declare their dissent from the 
 faith. They will not take this step without seri 
 ous reflection. They are thus forced to think 
 clearly for themselves. That may ultimately blast 
 the Rock of Ages with intellectual dynamite, but 
 at least they will know for what it stands. 
 
 American children are often curiously ignorant 
 of even the most beautiful of Biblical stories, 
 things they should know as matters of general cul 
 ture. Already the Sunday School despairs of 
 itself. It reaches only a comparatively small per 
 centage of children. It cannot hammer religion 
 into them as a part of their general education. It 
 is an outside thing in school. And an outside thing 
 it remains in life. We take our religion on Sun 
 days as one takes medicine. If conscience calls 
 during business hours, we aren't in. Sporadically, 
 however, we experience religion with hysterical 
 intensity. The corruptionist suddenly discovers 
 that he is wicked, and, like the newly-converted 
 savage, he suffers from violent ethical cramps. 
 With this difference: the savage, in sudden re 
 ligious fervor, may inflict harikari upon himself; 
 the reformed American millionaire vents his re 
 ligion on others. He plays Jack the Ripper to 
 Personal Liberty. He makes large donations to 
 the Anti-Saloon League. He deprives the little 
 ones of their Sunday. 
 
 We in America are Supermen in our glorious
 
 7 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 disregard of others, but without the excuse of 
 the Superman. We are like children badly 
 brought up. Our lack of sensitiveness is amaz 
 ingly revealed in the comic supplement of our 
 newspapers, the weekly glorification of horse-play. 
 The comic press is an unfailing determinant of a 
 country's morals. I am prepared to admit that 
 the coarse reflection of the life erotic in French 
 and German comic journals points to a similar 
 lack of sensitiveness on the Continent in matters 
 relating to sex. 
 
 We are perhaps most barbarous, most uneth 
 ical, in our attitude toward age. We lack that 
 tact of the heart for which white hair in itself is 
 an object of veneration. The wonder is that we 
 don't eat up our parents when their physical pow 
 ers decline. I am sure that certain exponents of 
 strenuousness would have something to say in de 
 fense of this practice. We would have heard 
 such a measure urged from the White House if 
 our chief executives were not themselves already 
 beyond the Oslerian age-limit. 
 
 The fathers of the Republic have, indeed, 
 shown their wisdom when they placed the highest 
 gift beyond the grasp of a boy. The cult of Os- 
 lerism could flourish only in the youngest land of 
 the world. We value youth above brains. I may 
 state so frankly, having both. We yield our seats 
 in a street railway- gladly to young girlhood; with 
 reluctance to an elderly woman; never would we
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 79 
 
 dream of sacrificing our convenience to an elderly 
 man. In Europe I have seen young ladies charm 
 ingly offer their seats to their elders of either sex. 
 
 Recently Mr. Roosevelt, before his departure 
 for Africa (How quaint this sentence will ring 
 in a hundred years when we have all passed into 
 history!) desperately clung to a strap in a 
 Broadway car. Perhaps, if he had still brandished 
 the Big Stick we would have shown some courtesy 
 to the man. But we have no reverence for past 
 attainment. We have no use for the " has-been." 
 No title softens the pillow of an " ex-." Abroad, 
 a distinguished man is honored not only for what 
 he is, but for what he has been in the past. 
 Our regard is confined to the man in office; 
 for the retired fighter we have merely a mild 
 contempt. 
 
 We forgive the man of action every sin except 
 the one forgivable sin. We countenance a Sen 
 ator's political corruption, but rise in anger over 
 his indiscreet note to some questionable female. 
 We boil over with indignation, where Paris or 
 Berlin would shrug their shoulders and smile. 
 Uncharitable, I say, and un-Christian. Christ 
 drove the money-changers from the temple, but he 
 forgave the Magdalen. 
 
 We are rather proud at heart of our financial 
 robber barons. We expect art to be moral. We 
 never question the morals of Wall street. We ap 
 ply the penal code to the artist, but we have only
 
 8o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 regard for the virtuoso in manipulating the ticker. 
 We set up monuments to grafters. Personally, I 
 have no objection to graft. On the contrary. But 
 I am afraid that it is a vice typically American. 
 There are grafters abroad, naturally. But one 
 does not speak of them with sneaking admiration. 
 They aren't " the thing," socially. They are not 
 regarded as models for the young. In Europe the 
 day of the robber baron is over; in America it has 
 only begun. 
 
 We do not interfere with the big thieves, ex 
 cept by calling them names. But we interfere 
 actively with the personal freedom of our humbler 
 citizens. We forbid them to play or to drink beer 
 on Sunday. I never play athletic games, and I 
 hardly ever drink beer. But I sometimes burn 
 with desire to soak myself with rum as a protest 
 against the fanatics. I believe, to paraphrase 
 Wilde, that it is not immoral for a prickly thistle 
 to be a prickly thistle, but that it would be fright 
 fully selfish if she wanted all the flowers of the 
 field to be both prickly and thistles. I have noth 
 ing to say against the teetotaler. I respect his 
 individuality. But let him respect mine. We 
 continually sin against individuality. Ours is 
 a country of ready-made morals and ready- 
 made clothes. Abroad no one meddles with 
 personal liberty, and nobody wears ready-made 
 clothes. 
 
 Conformity is our catchword. We suppress
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 81 
 
 subjective forces in politics and in art. We elim 
 inate the personal note in the press. The day of 
 the Greeleys was brief. Journalists abroad have 
 certain convictions which they are not prepared to 
 sacrifice at any price. We have no such convic 
 tions. One evening I had dinner in Berlin with 
 a celebrated professor of political history. His 
 name is on everybody's tongue. He is a man who 
 hobnobs with Emperors, and his weekly reviews 
 of the political situation are regarded as final. 
 All the newspapers of the world come to his 
 library, and he reads them all in the original lan 
 guages. 
 
 The conversation naturally drifted to journal 
 ism, and I interpreted for him the status of the 
 American editor. The policy of the paper, I ex 
 plained, is prescribed by the proprietor and re 
 versed at his pleasure; the editor's personal opin 
 ion is of no consequence, even if his salary may be 
 that of a king. He is a living automaton, paid for 
 his dexterity, not his views. He might write 
 Democratic editorials in the morning, and Repub 
 lican editorials at night. In private life he might 
 be a Socialist or a Mugwump. Yet no one would 
 think the less of him, or brand him as an unprin 
 cipled rogue. I did not pretend to be better than 
 others. I even admitted that to be such an in 
 tellectual Jekyll and Hyde might be a delightful 
 sensation. As long as my articles were unsigned, 
 I would not regard myself as responsible for their
 
 82 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 tenor. I should look upon my job as an exercise 
 in political dialectics. 
 
 The professor was very much shocked by this 
 lack of principle. His wife, a delightful woman, 
 looked upon me as one looks upon a leper. A 
 German journalist of standing would refuse to 
 write a line, signed or unsigned, of which he dis 
 approved in his heart. Those who sacrifice their 
 convictions are regarded as pariahs by the profes 
 sion at large. Journalists abroad take themselves 
 more seriously than we. They have finer ethical 
 standards. The professor, being not only a 
 learned, but also a wise man, realized that the 
 views I expounded were the logical growth of our 
 peculiar culture or the lack thereof; but I am 
 afraid he looks upon them as cancerous. Which, 
 perhaps, they are. 
 
 We play the game to win. We have little of the 
 sportsman's joy in the game as such. Not for us 
 the subtler victory of courageous defeat. As 
 money is the stake, we despise the poor not be 
 cause they are poor, but because they have not 
 " made good." We make compromises, permissible 
 in journalism, but fatal in art. Literary geniuses 
 of the old world are prepared, for the sake of 
 their vision, to live on a crust. Schiller was a man 
 of small means. Indeed, I probably got more for 
 my English version of his Maid of Orleans from 
 Maude Adams than he ever did for the original. 
 Chatterton " perished in his pride." I, Le Galli-
 
 THE MORALS OF EUROPE 83 
 
 enne says, perish in my conceit. Honorable pov 
 erty had no terror for the great English poets. 
 We barter dreamland kingdoms for real estate. 
 
 Our greatest living author is actually a corpora 
 tion. We may speak of " The Mark Twain " as 
 we speak of " The Standard Oil." That opens 
 amusing vistas of " The John Milton, Limtd.," 
 and " The William Shakespeare, Inc." For all 
 we know, this may be the solution of the Shake 
 speare problem. William Shakespeare may have 
 been merely the trade-mark for a stock company, 
 of which Francis Bacon was the chief stockholder, 
 and the gentleman usually referred to as the au 
 thor of the plays merely a dummy director! If 
 John Keats had been an American he might have 
 been incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. 
 His name, instead of being " writ in water," 
 would be writ on watered stock! The genius of 
 Poe, alas, was antipodal to the American spirit. 
 If he had capitalized his brains at five hundred 
 thousand dollars, he would surely be in the Hall 
 of Fame. Let me state right here that I refuse 
 ever to have my name there engraven. I prefer 
 to roam through the spirit world unindorsed by 
 smug nobodies, a vagabond ghost with Whitman 
 and Poe. 
 
 I turn an honest penny wherever I can. While 
 my attitude toward the Golden Calf is not one of 
 worship, I approach it with considerable respect. 
 Every dollar is so much potential energy impris-
 
 84 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 oned. But I refuse to water my literary stock for 
 any amount of money. That is the only way an 
 artist can be immoral. We have yet to learn the 
 raptures of the scholar whose eyes grow dim with 
 tears when, after digging in dusty tomes for five- 
 and-twenty years, he discovers the root of some 
 irregular verb. Not ours the thrill of the poet 
 who, after sleepless nights, dances with glee be 
 cause he has at last wrested from his brain the ulti 
 mate expression for some sensuous and elusive 
 emotion. We rank the man who gets away with 
 another man's invention above the author himself. 
 Logically, we should worship the devil because he 
 gets away with such a large part of God's creation.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ADAM AND EVE 
 
 WE exaggerate racial distinctions. Save for 
 skin and clothes we are not, any of us, far removed 
 from the ape. Primal instincts in men and women 
 are the same throughout the world, and the lure 
 of the flesh is the same. The American college 
 boy and the young Eskimo in his sealskin are 
 stirred by the same primitive impulse. The fun 
 damental facts of sex are identical in Kalamazoo 
 and in Pekin. But our attitudes toward sex un 
 dergo various transformations, with changes of 
 climate. We all have the same appetites, but our 
 modes of gratification vary with our refinement. 
 The table manners at Sherry's are not those of 
 Childs'. The desire of Lucullus for whipped 
 oysters, and the ravin of the Parisians, who stood 
 in line for bread during the great revolution, were 
 fundamentally one and the same hunger; but the 
 mastication of the Roman was art, while the 
 French mob chewed, munched and bolted hide 
 ously. Similarly, it may be safely affirmed, that 
 the ways of the love-famished lad are not those of 
 the gourmet. 
 
 85
 
 86 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Europeans are gourmets in love. They relish 
 it as they relish their oysters. We are a trifle 
 ashamed of it. But, being human, we cannot 
 starve ourselves. We steal to love's banquet 
 stealthily, with an uncomfortable feeling of doing 
 wrong. We sin, but we sin against our principles. 
 The continental youth sins on principle. We make 
 the flesh indecent, a thing we despise, but from 
 which, being human, we cannot divorce ourselves. 
 The refined European spiritualizes the flesh; he 
 makes it beautiful; he turns its frailty into 
 strength. Consequently, his love-life is healthier 
 than our own. Even when hectic desire entices 
 him into devious gardens of passion, vulgarity will 
 not bespatter his roses. We cannot be wicked 
 without being coarse. The consciousness of sin 
 dwells in our hearts like a worm. Spiritually there 
 is nothing of the Greek in us. 
 
 We may, however, speak of a renascence of the 
 Greek spirit abroad. Euphorion has not yet 
 sprung into life. He is about to be born. Ger 
 many is in travail. She is laboring, painfully, 
 slowly. Her, at times, morbid caprices in the im 
 mediate past were those of a woman enceinte. The 
 trip of the Greek dance is heard again in Berlin. 
 The subtleties of Greek sophists are echoed in Ger 
 man letters. Poets hark back to the Hellenic 
 themes Hofmannsthal's CEdipus confronts the 
 Sphinx. Electra wails in the music of Strauss. 
 Nudity, the weapon of Phryne, is raised to an art
 
 ADAM AND EVE 87 
 
 by Olga Desmond. The voice of Dionysos is heard 
 in Nietzsche. Germany's joy in the body is not yet 
 purely Hellenic. Poisonous vapors cloud the sun. 
 But sunrise is nigh. Already we hear the little 
 laugh of Aspasia. Germany has beheld the glori 
 fied het<era re-encased in the flesh. Beautiful and 
 cerebral, and free, she is the inspiration of sages 
 and poets. Not hers the penalty of mortality. She 
 is the mother of spirit-children; and Charmides is 
 her kinsman. He is more purely spiritual. Docile 
 and enthusiastic, pupil and friend, his lovely pres 
 ence comforts and stays in those high altitudes of 
 the mind where the garlands of passion shrivel to 
 dust. 
 
 We are not yet prepared for Hellenic ideals. 
 Charmides amongst us would be a dandified 
 " high-brow," and Aspasia, " off-color." We 
 would mar and crush and pervert her. And we 
 would certainly " cut " her. We understand 
 physiological passion, and we understand spiritual 
 passion, but we are intensely suspicious where one 
 partakes of the elements of the other. It is curi 
 ous that the greatest singer of spiritualized pas 
 sion should have been an American. Leaves of 
 Grass, not Mademoiselle de Mattpin, is " the Gol 
 den Book of Spirit and Sense." Perhaps Whit 
 man was given to us because we most needed him. 
 
 We need him more than ever for the emancipa 
 tion of man and the emancipation of passion. 
 Every country, they say, has the government it
 
 88 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 deserves. We are governed by Woman. We 
 cringe before her as slaves before the master. 
 And, like slaves, we talk evil of her behind her 
 back. And we adore her in false and hysterical 
 fashion. The reason usually ascribed by foreign 
 ers for the truly anomalous position of woman in 
 the United States is the scarcity of females among 
 our early settlers. They haven't been scarce, how 
 ever, for a good many years. There have been 
 plenty of them as long as / can remember. I would 
 blame the Pilgrim Fathers. The essential in 
 decency of the Puritan mind is clearly exposed in 
 the attitude of the American Adam toward the 
 American Eve. 
 
 We deify woman because we bestialize passion. 
 We place her on a pedestal, we forget she has a 
 body, so as not to despise her. We worship her 
 as a goddess, because we fear to degrade her as a 
 mate. We protect her by preposterous laws, be 
 cause we distrust ourselves and her. We have not 
 yet learned to love the body purely. We fail to 
 discriminate between passion and vice. So dis 
 torted is our vision, that sex in itself seems debas 
 ing. But the instinct of sex is ineradicable. The 
 goddess topples from the altar, if she does not 
 descend voluntarily. 
 
 Man is divine because he is human. We are 
 ashamed of that divinity. Out of that shame is 
 born the sham of our Puritan morals and a mor 
 bidity of which we are hardly aware. We yield
 
 ADAM AND EVE 89 
 
 to temptation surreptitiously, like bad monks. We 
 dare not make sin beautiful. We make it ugly 
 and coarse. And every time we react against our 
 own vulgar trespasses, we prostrate ourselves be 
 fore the Good Woman who doesn't exist, and 
 doesn't want to exist. We glory in groveling in 
 the dust at her feet. We give expression to the 
 unhealthy sentiment that no man is good enough 
 for a woman. When a prostitute slays one 
 of her lovers, she is beatified in the press. We 
 refuse to admit that a woman can be really 
 bad. 
 
 I always thought it ungallant, if truthful, of 
 Adam, to blame it all on the woman. But why 
 go to the opposite extreme, and blame everything 
 on the male? There is a strongly masochistic ele 
 ment in the American attitude toward woman. 
 The man who wheels a baby carriage for his sick 
 wife deserves laudation he is a hero; but the 
 man who assumes the domestic functions of the 
 female unnecessarily is a specimen from Krafft- 
 Ebing. 
 
 Elinor Glyn says that American men are like 
 brothers or elderly aunts. Elinor has her flashes. 
 The maleness of the average American is certainly 
 not so insistently felt as that of his cousin abroad. 
 Externally, at least, there is frequently a certain 
 feminine strain in the American man. He is 
 handsomer, more graceful, less strongly sexed. 
 Abroad, where men dictate theatrical fashion, the
 
 9 o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Chorus Girl monopolizes the musical comedy 
 stage. In an Amazon kingdom there would be 
 only Chorus Boys. We have not reached that 
 phase as yet, but undoubtedly the Chorus Boy is 
 already in the ascendant. 
 
 Our women are more self-possessed, more ath 
 letic, and, if it must be said, more mannish than 
 the Laura of Petrarch and the Gretchen of Faust. 
 Such modifications must already affect in some 
 subtle manner the relations between the sexes. 
 They give rise to cycles of problems novel in the 
 present stage of civilization. Perhaps the balance 
 of power is shifting. We have placed woman in 
 the saddle: beware lest she take the reins! Some 
 day we may be officially what we are already in 
 essence, a matriarchy, swayed by the " mother 
 right " of primitive races. Unless a radical re 
 adjustment takes place, the world may see the 
 spectacle of an American Amazon Queen ruling a 
 henpecked nation. 
 
 One hope, however, remains to the Mere Male : 
 the Eternal Woman. Yes, woman herself. For 
 we are mistaken if we imagine that she looks up to 
 the man who humiliates himself before her. She 
 is much too near the earth, too human, to find 
 pleasure in the exalted position we force upon her. 
 Nietzsche put the case rather strongly; too 
 strongly, I think. It is not the whip she craves, 
 but the master. When an American woman has 
 the opportunity of meeting a foreigner, she
 
 ADAM AND EVE 91 
 
 usually marries him. His masterful masculinity, 
 not his title, compels her attention. International 
 marriages are often unfortunate, because the 
 American woman, nursed in selfishness, lacks the 
 worldly wisdom and graceful resignation of her 
 less imperious sister. Nevertheless she is glad to 
 slip from her pedestal unnoticed, when she travels 
 abroad. Accustomed to epicene adoration, she not 
 infrequently falls an easy victim to aggressive 
 maleness abroad. 
 
 The American Girl in Europe reminds one of a 
 young queen traveling incognito. But that is 
 perilous, little girl, if you don't know the rules of 
 the game! The young German girl is wiser than 
 you in some things. She is less self-possessed, but 
 more self-reliant. She doesn't expect a man to 
 carry all her bundles. And she is not afraid to go 
 home unaccompanied, if need be. And when she 
 goes out with a man, she will not permit him to 
 pay for her as a rule. It isn't reasonable that 
 the male should support the female before they 
 are married. The young American is expected to 
 pay for the mere privilege of dining with a wo 
 man. Dear ladies, who read this, do not think 
 that I would not gladly invite you to dinner. I 
 object to the principle, not to the custom. The 
 young German woman generally accepts no such 
 favors as a matter of course. She knows that 
 " give and take " is the basis of every bargain. 
 An unfair bargain demoralizes the gainer. She
 
 92 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 also knows that the law of the man is not the law 
 of the maid. What's sauce for the gander isn't 
 always sauce for the goose. 
 
 Eve abroad knows that Adam is polygamistic ; 
 and that, if we wish to preserve the institution of 
 matrimony we must provide safety valves for the 
 man. One half of the world, we know, believes 
 in polygamy. The other half practises it. The 
 Koran sanctions, economy vetoes, a plurality of 
 wives. Occidental nations are monogamic in 
 theory, not in fact. 
 
 The continental woman, as a rule, overlooks the 
 extra-marital exploits of the husband. The neces 
 sity for this precaution is recognized officially only 
 in the Code Napoleon. But if you talk to the 
 wives confidentially, they will make startling ad 
 missions. I know a charming couple, somewhat 
 advanced in years, whose married life is an idyl. 
 With tender solicitude they read each other's 
 wishes from their eyes. I was astonished, because 
 I had been told that for many years the husband 
 had spent half his income on a mistress. And the 
 wife knew it, always. We had a heart-to-heart 
 talk. 
 
 " Where is she now? " I inquired. 
 
 " She is dead," the old lady answered. There 
 was a trace of relief in her voice. 
 
 "And she has had no successor?" 
 
 " None. You see, he is getting older, and even 
 before her death he had come back to me. He
 
 ADAM AND EVE 93 
 
 loved me all the time; the other woman merely 
 appealed to his senses. I am very happy now. I 
 only regret the money he squandered on that 
 that woman." 
 
 " Hush," I said, " she is dead. It is only just 
 that men should be more lavish with their mis 
 tresses than with their wives. The Scarlet Woman 
 is disinherited. Legally, socially, she is defense 
 less. The wife is privileged, fortified by the world. 
 Surely the guerdon of sin is scant in comparison." 
 
 " Probably you are right," she replied. " I be 
 gin to see life more steadily every year. We never 
 speak of her, save as one speaks of a friend. He 
 tries hard to make me forget, as well as forgive. 
 I let him exert himself. I accept his little favors," 
 she added, wistfully. " I tried hard enough to 
 make him forget in the past, and failed. I did 
 not let him kiss me for many years." 
 
 "And now?" 
 
 At this moment the husband came home from a 
 late constitutional, bringing her flowers like some 
 ancient Philemon to his Baucis, and tenderly 
 kissed her behind the ear. If she had been an 
 American woman, she would have dragged him to 
 the divorce court years and years ago. And the 
 late afternoon of their lives would have been sun 
 less and loveless. 
 
 We often make a mess of marriage because we 
 marry too young. We are in indecorous haste to 
 perpetuate the species. Marriage invariably rubs
 
 94 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the first bloom from the rose of romance. But 
 sometimes, between sincere men and women, the 
 flower of perfect understanding blooms more 
 lovely in the place of the first impetuous passion. 
 But the soil must be prepared for its growth. The 
 inexperienced boy-husband and his girl-wife are 
 too impatient. They will not wait for the soft 
 tendrils to sprout. Leaf by leaf they pick the rose 
 to pieces, and then, in petulant anger, desert the 
 garden. 
 
 Europe provides, for the husband, at least, an 
 amorous education antedating his marriage. He 
 needs lessons in sentiment, not in sensation. 
 Kisses, bought and loveless, are insufficient. The 
 young German generally has what is called " a 
 minor affair," Ein kleines Ferhdltniss. One might 
 call it a miniature marriage. The girl, usually 
 some shopgirl, sincerely loves him. She does not 
 expect him to marry her. And some day, she 
 knows, she will lose him. He brings culture be 
 yond her station into her life. She teaches him 
 the lesson of loving kindness. But for her, he 
 would learn from the gutter the lesson of vice. 
 She is the steward of his affection. She keeps it 
 pure for the woman who will take her place. 
 When he marries there will be tears, and not a 
 little heartache. And then she, too, will marry, 
 and will bring a trace of the refinement of her 
 lover into the humbler home of the husband. 
 The miniature marriage is at an end. None the
 
 ADAM AND EVE 95 
 
 worse for their experience, the youth and his ina 
 morata will each enter the major life. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. The standard of 
 bourgeois morality is the same the world over. 
 But we are all of us sinners. Only abroad, men 
 trespass artistically. We are bunglers in sin. In 
 Europe, however, the moral code is not indis 
 criminately applied. Genius is not compelled to 
 wear the cloak of ready-made morals. There is 
 a certain poet abroad; he is very famous. I will 
 not mention his name. Everybody knew that he 
 was equally in love with his wife and with an 
 actress of great reputation. Society respected his 
 peculiar temperament, and invariably asked either 
 the wife or the mistress when he was invited. The 
 mistress lived with him in town; the wife shared 
 his country seat. It happened some years ago 
 that both women about the same time whispered 
 the tenderest secret into his ear. That, I believe, 
 is the way they put it in novels. When at last the 
 fatal day had dawned, the poet is said to have 
 traveled hither and thither between his two abodes, 
 to comfort both women in their hour of need. 
 Berlin laughed, and forgave. 
 
 Margarete Beutler, a woman of distinguished 
 poetical gifts, frankly announced in an autobi 
 ographical sketch that she was temperamentally 
 unfitted for permanent wedlock; and Gabriele 
 Reuter, a Hypatia of letters, boldly advertised the 
 birth of her extra-marital child. Both women
 
 96 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 command the respect of even respectability abroad. 
 Europe has accepted still stranger erotic vagaries 
 from genius. Not because she approves of sexual 
 irregularity, but because she attaches no exagger 
 ated importance to purely personal physiological 
 functions. Brain counts for more than conven 
 tional morals. Aphrodite's reputation in Greece 
 was deplorable, but she nevertheless remained a 
 goddess. Mercury was a thief, but divine honors 
 were not therefore withheld. Those in whom the 
 divine spark glows and burns, must be forgiven 
 many frailties that would be unpardonable in mor 
 tals not so inspired. Their genius, in turn, casts 
 the glamor of romance over the squalid facts of 
 existence.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME WOMEN 
 
 I HAVE never loitered with prurient interest in 
 the love-marts of the world. I have been intoxi 
 cated with the glitter an-d glare of Broadway, but 
 even as a boy I never glanced twice, except in pity, 
 at the venders of passion. Therefore have I little 
 to tell of the Friedrichstrasse at night. I distin 
 guish, of course, between the demi-mondaine and 
 the scarlet-robed daughter of Lilith who has come 
 to us through the ages. The wisdom of the cen 
 turies, ironic, yet wistful, distorts the curve of her 
 smile. Her eyebrows quiver like serpents. Her 
 tunic is more precious than purple, for it is dyed 
 with the heart-blood of emperors; and her tiara is 
 jeweled with the songs of the world. Semiramis, 
 Sappho and Catherine the Great, her lurid incarna 
 tions, flame up against the horizon. Scarlet and 
 splendid, she holds in her hand the jewel of death 
 less yearning. She is begotten of Heaven and 
 Hell. 
 
 There are born three types of the female the 
 Eternal Harlot, the Eternal Woman, and the Wo 
 man in Scarlet. 
 
 97
 
 98 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 The Eternal Harlot bears the fragile vial of 
 transitory delight. She is all of the earth, earthy. 
 
 Less robust, still of the earth, but spiritualized 
 and transfigured, mistress and mother, the Eternal 
 Woman brings loving kindness and peace into the 
 world. Unlike the Woman in Scarlet, she has no 
 aspirations beyond the Race. Unlike the demi- 
 mondaine's, her eyes are set toward the future. 
 Through her, evolution works its indomitable 
 will. 
 
 The harlot is woman debased; she is woman 
 without cosmic purpose. The Woman in Scarlet 
 is woman endowed with an alien purpose, striving 
 to transcend the limits of sex. But sin and song 
 and dominion cannot appease in her heart the cry 
 for the child and the legitimate functions of wife- 
 hood; barren and sad and dissatisfied, she passes 
 into the night. 
 
 I have always viewed Venus peripatetica with 
 compassion and horror. And yet, are not we who 
 sell our souls more despicable than those who sell 
 only their bodies? The woman of the street pre 
 serves her authentic emotions for her lover. She 
 keeps her heart unscathed of the amorous traffic. 
 The writer, however, cannot give less than his 
 soul. He transmits something of his real self in 
 variably into his work, even if lovelessly under 
 taken. Try as you may, you can't help being sin 
 cere, sometimes. 
 
 The ^Esthetic School, conscious of the infamy
 
 SOME WOMEN 99 
 
 of this indecent exposure, diadems Pose with the 
 Castilian wreath. But that is, in itself, a pose. 
 We can, after all, draw only upon the resources 
 within us; and for literary purposes there is no ink 
 like heart blood. Le style c'est I'homme; and all 
 books are confessions. 
 
 But that is why the Friedrichstrasse at night 
 sickens my heart. In the daytime the Friedrich 
 strasse is a highway of commerce. When night 
 draws down her curtains spangled with constella 
 tions, the face of the street changes swiftly as by 
 the stroke of Merlin's magic wand. The mask 
 of humanity falls; the werewolf appears, savage 
 and growling. We are borne along the walking 
 love-mart of Berlin. 
 
 I could tell strange things of the Friedrich- 
 strasse, of uncouth passions and fantastic desires. 
 This is indeed a carnival of vice. Here unclean 
 phantoms keep their tryst. Curious caprices; un 
 canny suggestions; leprous faces and leering lips. 
 Sin in strange mummery grins at us. Lechery in 
 divers shapes makes indecent grimaces. Every 
 where the phosphorescent glow of an ancient civ 
 ilization. On Broadway I have seen only its pal 
 lid reflection. 
 
 If you carelessly glanced at this girl you would 
 not imagine that she is really Salmacis mincing his 
 steps as of old. Gray, pale wraiths of Greek 
 things walk in the shadow of Berlin. 
 
 Hush! I will be silent, and chain those dis-
 
 ioo CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 quieting visions in the remotest cerebral cavern. 
 I shall shut my eyes to that unholy procession, sus 
 taining the torch of unchastity and lighting the 
 temples of lust. 
 
 In the Moulin Rouge and in Arcadia, both not 
 far from the Friedrichstrasse, vice stalks in a 
 dress suit. There are cafes in the Friedrich 
 strasse where its companion is murder. Where 
 lust is king, aristocracy joins hands with the slums. 
 But my kingdom is not of this world. Love and 
 the women I sing dwell in another region. 
 
 Ermengarde, for instance, lived in Charlotten- 
 burg. Charlottenburg is to Berlin what Harlem is 
 to New York. Ermengarde is to me what Frau 
 von Stein was to Goethe. We have no such figures 
 as Frau von Stein in America. No text-book tells 
 of Longfellow's and Whittier's extra-marital 
 loves. Poe's love affairs were hopelessly Platonic, 
 and Whitman's children a bluff! We shall never 
 have a full-blooded art until we develop the 
 liaison. 
 
 As sounds from a music-box, women's faces 
 float in swift succession from the secret chambers 
 of my brain. I beg your pardon if I have falsi 
 fied literary history to round out a figure of speech. 
 My relations with Ermengarde were far more in 
 nocuous than Goethe's with Frau von Stein. We 
 never were sweethearts ; but love, like a spark, was 
 always ready to leap into flame. Those were de 
 lightful days, and delicious afternoon teas !
 
 SOME WOMEN 101 
 
 Dear Ermengarde, you were terribly knowing. 
 One could talk to you of all things. You knew 
 everybody; you had a man's understanding. Yet, 
 how womanly you were ! You were fond of me, 
 more than you dared confess even to yourself. But 
 you didn't take me quite seriously, and you knew 
 I was fickle. When we went to the theater to 
 gether, and you were gowned in your most splen 
 did attire I remember that dress overlaid with 
 silver ! I seemed to myself like a page of mediae 
 val days watching a band of players at the side of 
 his queen. And sometimes when her interest in 
 the play flagged, she softly squeezed his hand. 
 But the heart of the little page fluttered always, so 
 that he heard no word of what was said on the 
 stage. 
 
 And there was Madeleine, supple, strong and 
 superb. I think, Ermengarde, you were a little 
 jealous of her. I loved to sit with Madeleine and 
 her husband. We had our coffee in the garden 
 room, the three of us. We discussed art, and love, 
 and her prospective admirers. Madeleine was at 
 heart a Madonna a Madonna wedded to Don 
 Juan. A Madonna, moreover, who had absorbed, 
 intellectually, the philosophy of Don Juan. When 
 a man stares at a woman, she said, he uncon 
 sciously pays her a compliment. Like the knee of 
 the faithful reverently bended before the mon 
 strance, his attitude is a form of worship. And 
 every kiss, even if forced from reluctant lips, is a
 
 102 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 prayer at the shrine of Astarte, a virile affirma 
 tion of the supremacy of the sex. Such frankness 
 would have been unbecoming in a descendant of 
 the Pilgrim Fathers. It was refreshing in this 
 glorious daughter of Eve. There was always be 
 tween us, too, the potentiality of affection. The 
 European atmosphere is surcharged with sex at 
 traction. In America the ticker is the substitute 
 for the heart. 
 
 As I write this, certain brain vibrations shape 
 themselves into the enigmatic smile of Francesca. 
 If Mona Lisa had come to life, she would have 
 made your body her mansion ! You are somber 
 like her, and mysterious; but, unlike her, you ar 
 ticulate the meaning of your existence. We might 
 have been very dear to each other, had things 
 been different. You know there are women with 
 whom, for some curious reason, I feel as intimate 
 as though we had been sweethearts in an earlier 
 incarnation. You are one of these women. There 
 is nothing petty in you. With a miraculous pa 
 tience you listen to the confessions of others. You 
 are a mother-confessor who knows no frown ; only 
 blessings and balm flow from your strangely curved 
 lips. 
 
 I never quite understood your interest in Aho- 
 libah. Aholibah, to be sure, was intellectual, even 
 brilliant, but her eyes were weary from too much 
 loving. She was always seeking God, but her 
 temples tumbled, being built in the flesh. I told
 
 SOME WOMEN 103 
 
 her that I was sadly in need of some grande pas 
 sion. " Give me," I declaimed, " an unrequited 
 love! " She promised; but nothing came of it. I 
 saw too little of her, perhaps. Our ways there 
 after were like two geometrical lines that inter 
 sect at infinity only. 
 
 Life in Berlin was so strangely colored for me, 
 spiced with bewildering passions. The New 
 World seems stale after the potions, some venom, 
 some wine, quaffed from the cup of the Old. I 
 wonder if you will ever read this, Marion, strang 
 est and shyest of all my loves. I shall never for 
 get that evening we met at the house of , but 
 
 I must be careful; he, I am certain, will see what 
 I write. And how I read some passionate verses, 
 and how my voice trembled with real emotion, and 
 how involuntarily you lowered your eyes. And 
 no one knew that every word of my mouth was 
 aimed at your heart like an arrow. I wasn't sure 
 you knew, except when we said good-bye. Then 
 I said I forget what I said. You will remember, 
 being a woman ! How sweetly you smiled when 
 again we met. And then that curious letter, preg 
 nant with strange remorse ! I wonder why. Per 
 haps it is well we parted forever. Exquisite emo 
 tions are not easily duplicated; the heart is more 
 sensitive than the photographer's plate. 
 
 And then your namesake swam into my ken, 
 and again love wrote its purple meaning across the 
 sky. This Marion, too, loved me dearly. She
 
 io 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 bravely tried to conceal the truth from me. But 
 when I suspected her kinship, however remote, 
 with the throngs that people the Friedrichstrasse, 
 the wine of passion turned to gall. I was cruel to 
 her, uncharitable; and I know that some day I 
 shall be punished for this. 
 
 Valeria was her successor strange, morbid, 
 mad, hysterical. Her lover was a demon 
 morphine. There was no emotion, bizarre and 
 unrestful, with which her soul would not vibrate. 
 Above all, she loved pain. Her love for me 
 was idolatrous. I cannot describe my emotion 
 for her. Passion was curiously mixed with amaze 
 ment. 
 
 I was often stunned and surprised abroad. I 
 met so many people out of my own books! I had 
 never known that they really existed. I had never 
 met them at Martin's. They had hidden their 
 faces from me in America. Yet, here they were. 
 I recognized the type. They made me feel creepy. 
 I understood why my critics had objected to them. 
 I wouldn't like to pass my life amongst them. I 
 am not sure whether I ought not to have " cut " 
 them. In the purple nights of Berlin I saw for the 
 first time that I had always been a realist. I was 
 sorry for the figments of my brain when I beheld 
 them splendidly clothed in the flesh. 
 
 I was most sorry for you, little girl, I don't 
 remember your name, although I have written 
 a poem to you :
 
 SOME WOMEN 105 
 
 O little siren of the rose-white skin, 
 Reared to strange music and to stranger sin, 
 With scornful lips that move to no man's plea, 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
 Beneath long lashes, downcast eyes and coy, 
 
 Yet uninitiate to no secret joy! 
 
 O bud burst open ere her day begun, 
 
 The 'virgin and the strumpet blent in one! 
 
 Come close to me! Lay your small hand in mine, 
 
 And drink the music of my words like wine. 
 
 And let me touch your little breasts that swell 
 
 With joy remembered where her kisses fell. 
 
 Ah! she whose wise caressive fingers strike 
 
 Your heart-strings and the cithara alike! 
 
 By what love-potion is your passion fanned, 
 
 What is the magic of that wary hand? 
 
 What is the secret of her strange caress, 
 
 Fierce tortured kisses, or the tenderness 
 
 That woman gives to woman flame or snow? 
 
 I, too, can kiss or bruise you; you shall know 
 
 That love like mine is delicate as hers, 
 
 Or madder still, to madder passion stirs, 
 
 That shall consume you like some fiery sea. 
 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
 Or is it song that sets your blood on fire? 
 Behold in me no novice to the lyre. 
 Who is this woman Sappho? I can sing 
 Like her of Eros. Yea, each voiceless thing,
 
 io6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 The 'very rocks of Mytilene's strand 
 Shall be made vocal at your sweet command. 
 Hers but the cooing of the Lesbian lutes, 
 Mine every passion in the heart that roots. 
 Albeit your sweetness lives in Sappho's song, 
 Her love is barren . . . and the years are long. 
 And how she sang and how she loved and erred, 
 Only by moonsick women will be heard. 
 The lyric thunder that my hand has hurled 
 Shall ring with resonant music through the world, 
 Quickening the blood in every lover's breast. 
 And then your beauty on my glory's crest 
 Shall ride, a goddess, to eternity 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
 Unscathed in Love's dominion I have been, 
 And still a sceptic kissed the mouth of Sin. 
 Love seemed the dreariest of all things on earth, 
 Until my passion filled your heart with mirth! 
 Like frightened bird my cynic wisdom flies 
 Before the cruel candor of your eyes. 
 As for sweet rain a valley sick with drouth, 
 Thus thirsts my love for your indifferent mouth; 
 And still your thoughts are wandering to the dell 
 Where Sappho walks and where her minions 
 
 dwell. 
 
 Be then, of maidens most corrupt, most chaste, 
 The one delight that I shall never taste! 
 And through the dreary aons yet unborn, 
 The love of you shall rankle like a thorn.
 
 SOME WOMEN 107 
 
 Leave one last thrill for my sad heart to crave 
 In the ennui of heaven and the grave. 
 Incite my passion; my embraces flee 
 And never, never, never come to me! 
 
 listen, listen to my heart-beat's call! 
 Aught else I say, it is not true at all. 
 
 She has her maidens whom her soft ways woo, 
 And they to her are no less dear than you. 
 For your dear sake I gladly fling aside 
 Laurels and loves! A beggar stripped of pride, 
 
 1 only know I need you more than she 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
 Your arms were lilies, you were frail, childlike ; 
 but your eyes peered with demoniacal passion into 
 ancient abysses glittering with putrefaction. Dear 
 Little Maid of Sappho, how I might have loved 
 you! And ah! that feverish night half drowned 
 in champagne, with the sinister suggestions of an 
 alien Aphrodite. I was not strong to save you. 
 Besides, I had no time. That sounds very heart 
 less. I am afraid I am too egocentric to be easily 
 diverted into the labyrinth of another's soul. Yet 
 the thought of you, little girl, fills me with a vague 
 unrest. You might have been my fate: you were 
 hardly an episode. Perhaps we shall meet again. 
 But you will then be beyond salvation. 
 
 We often speak with envy of the romance of 
 forgotten days. Yet if, like the Yankee Knight at
 
 io8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 King Arthur's court, we were to drop backward 
 through time, we should probably find life squalid 
 and empty of roses. Romance dwells not without, 
 but within. The rose of romance thrives only 
 miserably in the heart of the American woman. 
 The two-headed monster of self-consciousness 
 and self-seeking chills its bloom with icy breath. 
 Americans are ashamed of their emotions. 
 Europeans are proud of them. 
 
 Of the women I met abroad, Thusnelda, above 
 all others, knew the magic that transmutes the 
 dross of life into the pure gold of adventure. 
 Every one she met became a tree in her landscape 
 of dreams. She had a genius for being unhappy. 
 The common bread of life became ambrosia in her 
 hands if only she could moisten it with tears. She 
 was distinctly a blossom of a civilization grown 
 weary even of pleasure. She would have been 
 morbid, not to say pathological, had she been an 
 American. But in Europe the strange complex 
 ities of her temperament were not at variance with 
 the complex and colorful life about her. 
 
 Thusnelda preferred a wreath of thorns to a 
 wreath of roses. I am sure, Thusnelda, you will 
 not take it amiss if I quote from your letters. You 
 wrote some things that I should love to have 
 written. I shall tear your golden words out of the 
 jaws of oblivion. Who knows, perhaps this will 
 make them immortal. I would have no objection 
 to your printing my letters. I would regard it
 
 SOME WOMEN 109 
 
 as a compliment. But I am a professional writer, 
 and you are not. I cannot afford to write beauti 
 ful letters. I write only for publication. Besides, 
 in this country, the honeyed sonnets of lovers are 
 turned into nooses to strangle their authors in 
 divorce suits and actions for breach of promise! 
 
 I remember the evening Albertus introduced us. 
 I knew how madly you adored him, and that his 
 heart was a stone. And how much satisfaction 
 you got out of your misplaced affection. And how 
 I fell sick, and how kindly you nursed me, sus 
 pecting perhaps the possibility of a tragic affec 
 tion. 
 
 I am afraid you idealized me, as you idealized 
 all things. I know that in appearance I am not 
 very poetic. I wear my hair short. I am a well- 
 preserved young man, notwithstanding my twenty- 
 five years, but I don't look the poet. You are 
 right: I should have been dark. But how well 
 you said it. I think it was in your second letter: 
 
 " When God made you," you wrote, " He 
 willed to make you dark-complexioned and dark of 
 hair, like some Italian or an Assyrian prince. But 
 seeing that your hair was golden, he made your 
 heart black! But no, I lie! It is more wicked to 
 call you evil than any dream of evil that ever your 
 delicate soul has conceived. 
 
 " How lovely are even the demons of your In 
 ferno! Can you help it if your roses are drops of
 
 no CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 blood, and your songs poison-flowers? Ah! Those 
 demons! They have stood by my cradle, too, and 
 often I hearkened to their voices when the wind 
 whistled around the walls of my paternal castle. 
 Comraded by them I drifted upon the river of my 
 youth. Sometimes they smile upon me out of the 
 deep eyes of my lover. They will hover over my 
 grave and chant an uncouth melody over this pas 
 sionate heart of mine, that ever yearned for roses, 
 and ever kissed the thorns! 
 
 "7 am fond of you: I can never love you. I 
 can only love the setting sun, when far away he 
 crimsons the sky with yearning and with blood; or 
 the perfume of jessamine; or the cry of the wild 
 heron fleeing from autumnal days into sunnier 
 regions; or the soul of Albertus Magnus, where 
 sunset and odor and the freedom of wild things 
 are woven into one. But you should not have sent 
 me those poems. They knock at the door of my 
 heart and whisper, and plaintively call to me 
 through the night." .... 
 
 I had not been interested in that woman until I 
 received her letter. She had made a poem of our 
 commonplace meeting. Prose could not nestle in 
 the folds of her garments; neither could sin soil 
 her feet. Everything she touched became strange 
 and romantic. 
 
 We subsequently spent a happy evening to 
 gether. Thusnelda bared her soul to me, and I
 
 SOME WOMEN in 
 
 am afraid I was a little shocked by some of the 
 things she said. But that evening, charming as 
 it was, had not prepared me for the following let 
 ter. In Thusnelda's imagination, our meeting had 
 blossomed forth into a flower, glorious and 
 golden; and when I re-read her letter I knew she 
 was right. For there are miracles everywhere. 
 But we have eyes that see not, and ears that hear 
 not. The voice of Romance is audible in America 
 only to poets and artists, and even they are a little 
 ashamed of being different from others. This is 
 the letter: 
 
 " Oh Night of all Nights! Like a fairy tale, so 
 different, so miraculous and so strange! Why do 
 you -peer so questioningly into my world? Are 
 your eyes so darkened that you can no longer look 
 upon nudity, and turn half terrified from the 
 naked soul? In my Kingdom there are only souls, 
 naked and free and -pure as in Paradise. Not that 
 Paradise where the forbidden tree rustles prurient 
 suggestions; but in that woodland evergreen where 
 the gods walk with men, and beget a powerful race 
 to which no Eden is out of reach, and no precipice 
 too deep to be sounded. 
 
 "All that happens in the name of beauty and 
 of greatness must be great and beautiful forever. 
 We must be what the God in us determines us to 
 be. The riddle of the Universe is child's play if 
 once we know nature is beauty, beauty nature;
 
 ii2 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 and if we carry God in our hearts, our lives 
 be prayer. But to -pray is to yearn, to hope, to 
 thank. These things I can give to you. Never ask 
 more of me, but remember that I am the hand 
 maid and lover of one who shall never touch me, 
 and never love me. My love for him is sacred, 
 and, like the host, may not be divided. Pray for 
 me!" .... 
 
 It will be supremely difficult for the healthy 
 American animal to comprehend sympathetically 
 the complexities of this woman. Neither can we 
 understand that the non-attainment of desire may 
 be more strangely seductive to imaginative na 
 tures than brutal and often unlovely realization. 
 I confess that I myself was sorely puzzled at first 
 by Thusnelda; but surely she has made my life 
 richer and deeper, and unlocked for me gardens 
 of spiritual passion, stranger and fiercer than rap 
 tures that root in the flesh. And I must also admit 
 that I have had strong revulsions of feeling 
 against her, and that on the whole I am glad that 
 she will be unique in my life. 
 
 But surely Europe has strange allurements and 
 secrets for barbarians from overseas. 
 
 Let me here set down the story of Gwendolen, 
 the lov.ely bride of my childhood. We had been 
 lovers since I was six and she was four. My love 
 for her, I admit, was not my first romantic attach 
 ment, but the only one the perfume of which has
 
 SOME WOMEN 113 
 
 clung to me through the years. Before I met her, 
 I believe, I wanted to marry our janitor's daugh 
 ter, the family cook good old camel! and a 
 beautiful princess forty years my senior, whom 
 George Meredith has made the heroine of one of 
 his novels, and who was a friend of my mother. 
 That was many years ago, but the fire in her hair 
 and in her heart will never go out. I speak of 
 Helene von Racovitza. 
 
 Gwendolen had lovely brown ringlets. She was 
 the most beautiful child I have ever seen. As I 
 look upon her picture now, I clearly see that she 
 was one of those elfin creatures, who, like Peter 
 Pan, cannot abide on earth. We were parted 
 when I was ten. I crossed the seas. We seldom 
 wrote to each other. And then, some years later, 
 she died. Strange to say, her death hardly stirred 
 me. But when I went abroad, recently, for the 
 first time since my childhood, I called on her 
 mother, and then my youthful love came back to 
 me with curious insistence. The mother, sweet 
 woman, opened a little parcel of the dead girl's 
 hair, and told me how Gwendolen had often 
 spoken of me. When I was expected at the house, 
 she had always asked for a new pinafore and 
 looked at herself in the mirror, anxiously asking: 
 " Do you think that he will like me in this?" 
 
 Never do we more poignantly realize our hu 
 man impotence than when we vainly beat against 
 the gray gate of eternity, striving to wrest the
 
 n 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 wraith of one we love from the iron embrace of 
 the relentless void. The winged seraphs of heaven 
 have carried her away to a distant Ajden where 
 perchance Annabel Lee welcomes her Tis a play 
 mate. While these fancies flitted 'through my 
 brain, the Jehu of my taxicab sat grinning at his 
 wheel. Every minute of my pain was registered by 
 the click of his meter. Every tear of my heart was 
 an added obolus in his pocket. 
 
 From out the sea of faces of women in scarlet, 
 of all my loves, curious and brilliant-hued, this 
 one child's memory still abides beckoning to me 
 from the Old World. Her little ghost will never 
 see this. She will never know how tenderly I 
 think of her. But can she really be dead? When 
 the thought of her, even now, almost brings tears 
 to my eyes? Maeterlinck is right. No one is dead, 
 who still lives in the hearts of others. 
 
 But, good folks, accept my apologies. This has 
 nothing to do with Europe.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 
 
 IT is queer to have anybody ask you whether 
 you have seen your grandmother's statue, and to 
 confess that you have not. That is exactly what 
 happened to me when I came to Berlin. Edwina 
 Viereck had died many years before I was born. 
 I had read of her beauty, and I had discovered, 
 among my father's papers, some diaries penned by 
 her hand. We had pictures of her at home, but I 
 never had as much personal interest in my grand 
 mother as I have had in Helen of Troy Town. 
 But when I stood within the Royal Playhouse at 
 Berlin before her loveliness hewn in marble, it 
 seemed to me as though I felt for a moment upon 
 my forehead the impress of her lips. 
 
 I was almost convinced that in the foyer, which 
 had once re-echoed with her praise, I met the ghost 
 of Edwina Viereck. I feel akin to her now. I 
 can almost see her as she appeared on the stage. 
 She is said to have been most wonderful in Schil 
 ler's Turandot, which nobody plays nowadays, 
 when she challenged the beholder to look upon 
 her beauty and not lose his reason. And there is a
 
 n6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 poem, I have forgotten by whom, in which " der 
 Fiereck wunderschones Haupt" is recounted in 
 rapturous phrases. I was elated at first by that 
 laurel-wreathed bust. It isn't everybody whose 
 grandmother is immortalized in marble at the 
 Royal Playhouse in Berlin. 
 
 Yet there was something saddening to me in 
 the vision. Every statue is a memento of the 
 evanescence of human life. There is something 
 pathetic in the smile frozen in marble, while the 
 beautiful lips of the woman herself are choked 
 with dust and corruption. Besides, I was a little 
 jealous that her image should smile upon others 
 as it smiled upon me, her grandson. I could ap 
 preciate why the children of famous people often 
 feel injured when strangers write understandingly 
 of their parents. This curious egotism even 
 prompts them sometimes to belittle a great man 
 departed, if only to indicate that their knowledge 
 of him is more intimate than the world's. 
 
 We would be shocked if we saw the bleaching 
 bones of our immediate progenitors exposed to 
 the gaze of the many in a museum of anatomy. 
 Are we not humanly justified, therefore, if we re 
 sent an autopsy of their soul? If Mrs. Browning 
 had been my mother, I would not like to listen to 
 other people's interpretations of her passional 
 sonnets. And yet I am fully aware that all art is 
 a form of exhibitionism. 
 
 In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory I
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 117 
 
 once saw little white mice revolving in a circle, 
 crazily, without pause, like dancing dervishes. 
 Generations ago, Asiatic cunning had destroyed 
 the sense of equilibrium in their ancestors to make 
 toys of them for the delectation of almond-eyed 
 women. So these, too, turn ever in a vicious circle, 
 imagining, no doubt, perpetual gyration the 
 proper and logical state of mouse. Even thus we, 
 I sometimes fancy, obey not our own volition, but 
 the monstrous caprice of an alien will. There is 
 an irresistible scientists would say compulsory 
 impulse that urges our pens and animates 
 our chisels. We flout our nakedness in the mar 
 ket-place, and turn our grandmothers into 
 copy! 
 
 My mother's father, Wilhelm Viereck, was the 
 founder of the German Theater in San Francisco. 
 My father's mother was Edwina Viereck. Never 
 theless, I have not inherited from my grandpar 
 ents any instinctive love for the stage, although I 
 have been in intimate relation with the theater all 
 my life. Our theatrical conditions are hardly 
 calculated to foster such a love. The drama in 
 America is the lowest of the arts. She is the 
 handmaid of the mimic propensity inherited by 
 us from our simian sires. Theatricalism has 
 chained the Muse to the wheel of its motor. 
 Plays are written to order. The author's name 
 hardly appears on the program. 
 
 I have never been one of those who place the
 
 n8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 drama on the uppermost rung of the ladder of art. 
 A poem, a statue, a picture is wonderful, each in 
 itself. It needs no interpreters. It summons no 
 other art or artifice to its aid. The drama de 
 pends for its support on various scaffoldings, al 
 though the great dramas of Shakespeare and 
 .ZEschylus are no less effective in the closet than 
 on the stage. The little dramas of contemporary 
 American playwrights, like fairy-gold when the 
 charm is withdrawn, are tatters and rags if di 
 vorced from the footlights. The great dramatists 
 have written to express themselves. We write to 
 express others, usually actors of inferior mental 
 caliber. Shakespeare garbed the body of the 
 Muse with new splendor. We, with rare excep 
 tions, manufacture dramatic tinsel to cover up the 
 mental and physical deficiencies of some over- 
 advertised female. 
 
 In Shakespeare's days the mimes were called 
 " shadows." The substance, the play, remained 
 after their exit. In America to-day the play is 
 the shadow. We have no brains for abstractions 
 either in politics or aesthetics. We are swayed 
 solely by the personality of the actor. Julia Mar 
 lowe is more real to us than Shakespeare himself. 
 We place the shadow above the substance. In 
 America the playwright is successful if he adapts 
 himself to the actor. Abroad the actor is success 
 ful if he adapts himself to the playwright. Abroad 
 they have great dramas and great actors. We
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 119 
 
 have no dramas. And we develop not actors, but 
 virtuosi. 
 
 There are many theaters in Berlin, I don't 
 know how many. The royal theaters, being bul 
 warks of conservatism, are not regarded seriously 
 by the critics. The interest of the elect centers 
 around the two great rival playhouses of Brahms 
 and of Reinhardt, the Lessing Theater and the 
 Deutsche Theater. Brahms stands for realism, 
 Reinhardt for everything else. Brahms has dis 
 covered Ibsen for Germany. Reinhardt is a cere 
 bral Belasco. Belasco wrings our hearts. Rein 
 hardt excites our brains. Germany looks to him 
 for curious and gorgeous intellectual experiments. 
 Reinhardt has discovered Shakespeare, and, of 
 late, he discovered Goethe. Or, to be more pre 
 cise, he has rediscovered the classics. He takes 
 Faust or A Midsummer Night's Dream and trans 
 lates the language of centuries gone into the lan 
 guage of the twentieth century. His Faust is a 
 modern. His Romeos and his Juliets are our con 
 temporaries. He makes no impious attempt to 
 superimpose his own meanings upon those of the 
 author, but he strikingly interprets and brilliantly 
 illuminates him. 
 
 I am not surprised that Berlin refused to accept 
 Beerbohm Tree's dazzling but superficial versions 
 of Shakespeare. Sothern would probably meet 
 with a similar disastrous fate. The Germans are 
 the greatest interpreters of Shakespeare. They
 
 120 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 are in sympathy with him. They understand him 
 all of him. I never understood Shakespeare until 
 I had seen King Lear and As You Like It staged 
 by Reinhardt and Felix Hollander, his able as 
 sistant. There is no nuance they permit to escape 
 them. They interpret alike the lovely and the 
 coarse. They discover even in the plays some 
 thing of the spirit of the mysterious Sonnets. 
 There are moments when Mr. W. H. flits across 
 the stage. The smile of the Shakespeare bust 
 seems less enigmatic than of yore, his personality 
 less inscrutable and less distant, after we have 
 caught glimpses of his face in that playhouse of 
 Reinhardt's. 
 
 Reinhardt employs a revolving stage, consisting 
 of several sections. Each of these sections is a 
 stage in itself. Only one at a time is seen by the 
 audience. This arrangement enables the stage 
 manager to shift his scenes with incredible swift 
 ness. Shakespeare thereby regains the spontaneity 
 which he loses when the scenes are torn out of 
 their logical artistic sequence by the requirements 
 of modern stage-craft. Reinhardt sometimes per 
 mits the stage to rotate with the curtain up, re 
 vealing a succession of pictures displaying the 
 characters in their simultaneous actions. We see 
 how, behind the scenes, they carry out the poet's 
 intentions. Thus we visualize the action, as it 
 must have evolved in the brain of Shakespeare. 
 
 Adjoining the Deutsche Theater Reinhardt has
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 121 
 
 reared a shrine to art with a capital A. The 
 Chamber-plays (Kammerspiele) are to the drama 
 what chamber music is to the opera. The little 
 theater housing the chamber-plays is a jewel-box 
 lined with silk. Everything is subdued and costly. 
 Costumed attendants silently hand you the pro 
 gram. Prices are almost prohibitive. The intel 
 lectual middle classes are barred with triple brass 
 from this holy of holies. The elect go to the 
 Chamber-plays as reverently as one goes to church. 
 Sometimes the silence becomes almost audible. 
 
 Strange women in strange garbs, and uncouth 
 men with curious beards and long hair, the Super 
 men's Brigade, are here assembled in solemn con 
 clave with the aristocracy of birth and finance. 
 There are furs, and antique brooches, wristbands 
 serpentine and suggestive, shimmering velvets and 
 rustling silks. The faces of the beholders are 
 placid. Aloof, intellectual, calm, they analyze the 
 performance. Emotion is suppressed. No ap 
 plause is permitted. The intellectual pabulum 
 presented at the Chamber-plays is distinctly haut- 
 gout. We know what awaits us. We must not 
 be surprised at anything. In this assemblage 
 Stirner is a truism, Nietzsche passe. They would 
 listen with imperturbable intellectual hauteur to 
 stage adaptations from the medical data of Mag 
 nus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis. 
 
 The actors are men and women endowed with 
 brains. They have a serious interest in art. Act-
 
 122 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 ing to them is more than " business." They are 
 all individualities with the stamp of genius, who 
 willingly submerge their egos in the harmonious 
 whole. Wherever Reinhardt rules, intellectual 
 values are at a premium. Style determines des 
 tinies. Bernard Shaw thrives in his care. The 
 Chamber-Play House is the citadel of the bizarre. 
 It is a hot-house for exotic genius, a mansion of 
 many moods. Within its confine poets may safely 
 play with intellectual lightning. The psychologist 
 may with impunity empty his vials of pestilential 
 bacilli. 
 
 This public is immune against every mental 
 disease. Unlike the naive audiences of our Ameri 
 can play-houses, we find here grown men who have 
 passed safely through the ailments of intellectual 
 immaturity. Schnitzler's orgasmic Reigen leaves 
 them unstartled. The hysterical Greeks of Hugo 
 von Hofmannsthal, that brilliant young Viennese, 
 arouse a responsive chord in their breasts. They 
 smile contemptuously at Max Halbe's Jugend 
 not a single character in that play might have 
 been lifted from Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia 
 Sexualls. But they accept at their proper value 
 Wedekind's dramatic grotesques. They appre 
 ciate Fruhtings Erwachen. 
 
 Let me tell you about Friihling's Erwachen 
 (Springs Awakening). Wedekind, its author, is 
 two-fifths a clown and three-fifths a genius. He 
 is peculiar, bizarre, uneven. But in Friihling's
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 123 
 
 Erwachen he has produced a masterpiece, because 
 the subject, puberty, is in tune with his unbalanced 
 genius. His individual mood for once coincides 
 with a world mood. 
 
 Wedekind's play, the Salome of Wilde, Barrie's 
 Peter Pan, and Shaw's Casar and Cleopatra are 
 to my mind the four representative plays of the 
 century. 
 
 Peter Pan embodies the imperishable longing 
 for eternal youth ; being very young, he is conscious 
 of the insufferable burthen of years upon the 
 shoulders of the race. For in youth, as Words 
 worth knew, we are still close to the infinite. He 
 stands upon the beginning of an arch in the bridge 
 of time spanning the void between being and not- 
 being. His backward glance more surmises than 
 sees glimpses of chains unending. Casar and 
 Cleopatra is the supreme expression of sophistica 
 tion. Shaw's Caesar is the Superman conscious of 
 his part in the world's evolution. He attains 
 through cerebration what Peter Pan knows by in 
 stinct. Salome is the gorgeous encasement of 
 morbid beauty and misdirected desire. The 
 theme of Wedekind's Friihling's Erwachen is uni 
 versally human. The dramatist unfolds before 
 our eyes puberty with its pure and ecstatic affec 
 tions and its curious sensual nightmares. Wilde, 
 with the unfailing veracity of the great poet, has 
 doomed Salome in his play, as she is doomed in the 
 process of evolution. Normal humanity, of
 
 i2 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 which Wedekind's youthful hero, Melchior, is a 
 typical incarnation, overcomes the perils besetting 
 its path. Wedekind's hero dallies with death, as 
 we all dally with death, but in the end life is tri 
 umphant. 
 
 The supreme moment in Wedekind's play is the 
 scene in the graveyard, where the boy wavers be 
 tween life and death. His old playfellow, who 
 had blown out his brains, stands there with his 
 head under his arm, preaching the doctrine of con 
 tentment in Nirvana. At this moment there 
 appears Life, a gentleman with a mask, cynical, 
 cruel and lavish and kind. He orders the dead 
 boy to return to the grave, and declares that the 
 philosophy of resignation is the philosophy of sour 
 grapes. With fine and healthy cynicism he invites 
 Melchior to supper. " After what I have done," 
 Melchior exclaims, " no supper can bring peace to 
 my soul." " That," remarks the gentleman, " de 
 pends on the supper." They go out together, Life 
 and the boy, deserting the tombs for the banquet. 
 The dead boy takes his head under his arm and 
 resignedly returns to his coffin, murmuring to him 
 self, " Now I shall raise my tombstone, which 
 that clumsy chap has upset, warm my hands in cor 
 ruption and smile. ..." 
 
 In the history of dramatic literature there is 
 worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with 
 the finale of Wedekind's play only the graveyard 
 scene in Hamlet. But it is not the sort of thing
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 125 
 
 to which the Tired Business Man that atrocious 
 bogey raised whenever Art lifts her head in the 
 American theater would repair for a tonic. 
 
 The intellectual stamp dooms a play to failure 
 in America. The absence of it dooms it to failure 
 abroad. Of course, The Merry Widow is an im 
 portation from Europe. And even abroad, I ad 
 mit, the Merry Widow waltz was more popular 
 than the dance of Salome. But a distinction is 
 made between entertainment and art. We cater 
 only to entertainment. And if we have an idea, 
 we attempt to disguise the intellectual germ in a 
 thick layer of saccharine sentiment and theatrical 
 clap-trap. Mentality is written over the stage 
 door abroad. Cerebral, restless, the German mind 
 seeks ever for new spheres of expression. Thus, 
 the late Meta Illing, a distinguished and beautiful 
 actress, endeavored to speak to her compatriots 
 through the medium of English. Her English 
 Theater was intended primarily for the Germans, 
 not for English and American visitors, and was pat 
 ronized by the Kaiser. If some manager were to 
 put on The Sunken Bell in Chinese he would like 
 wise find an interested audience, at least in Ber 
 lin. Goethe's Iphigenia was played in Esperanto 
 under the direction of Emanuel Reicher. There 
 is everywhere the desire to conquer new ter 
 ritory by shattering the barriers of foreign 
 tongues. A tendency toward universality is 
 conspicuous.
 
 126 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Frau Dumont, of Diisseldorf, has attempted to 
 purge the drama with its eternal problems from 
 purely local associations. She has abolished deco 
 ration, and everything merely temporal or limiting 
 the message of art. There are no properties, no 
 scenery at all. Her background consists merely of 
 an immense sheet of linen, sometimes with chro 
 matic borders, and illuminated from behind with 
 simple, dominant colors defining the basic mood of 
 the scene. There are no footlights, nothing to dis 
 tract the attention from the words of the poet. 
 Frau Dumont's method should be tremendously 
 effective in staging the mystic plays of Maeter 
 linck and of Yeats, where the characters, vague 
 and elusive, pass shadowlike before our vision. 
 The revolving stage is the proper medium 
 for Shakespeare with his definite outlines 
 and his vivid perceptions of life. The stage 
 of Frau Dumont, with its glimpses of in 
 finity and vague suggestions, represents aptly the 
 unique mentality of the author of The Death of 
 Tintagiles. 
 
 Satiated with all things, the ancient civilizations 
 are ever ready to hail the new. Out of the mental 
 unrest of modern Germany is born the tenth of the 
 Muses, the new art of nudity. Many things that 
 once were natural are to-day arts. There was a 
 time when men's motions were naturally graceful, 
 when dance was instinctive. But in the course of 
 time mankind forgot; and what was once a func-
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 127 
 
 tion of every human being, is resurrected to-day in 
 the polished art of Isadora Duncan. Song, we are 
 told, is older than speech. The conversation of 
 men in olden days was rhythmic. Poetry to-day is 
 an art confined to the few. In the golden ages 
 of the Greeks and in the Paradise of the Hebrew, 
 men were splendid and nude. Then came sin, 
 and we swathed our bodies in hideous clothes, and 
 were ashamed of them. And so long have we hid 
 den and marred them, that at last nudeness, like 
 singing and dancing, has become an accomplish 
 ment. 
 
 The two chief German exponents of the new art 
 are Olga Desmond and Herr Salge, who have 
 given a number of performances in Berlin before 
 the Society of the Friends of Beauty, and later in 
 public, in which they went perfectly nude through 
 a series of beautiful poses. They made the curves 
 of their bodies express meanings as definite as 
 sculpture and music. The Greeks, I am sure, 
 would have welcomed this new addition to the 
 ranks of the Muses. But in Germany, as I have 
 said, the incarnation of Euphorion is not as yet 
 wholly consummated. The new art was hotly dis 
 cussed throughout the Empire, and the police were 
 called upon to interfere with Olga Desmond's 
 performances outside of Berlin. The matter 
 was debated in the Reichstag, and, strange to 
 say, the Government itself took up the cudgels for 
 the new Muse of Nudity. The Reichstag attended
 
 128 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 in a body one of Olga Desmond's performances. 
 Imagine how Congress would behave in an analo 
 gous instance! 
 
 Distinguished artists, among these Reinhold 
 Begas, and Professor Herter, the creator of the 
 Heine fountain in New York, hastened to the de 
 fense of Desmond. Begas insisted that the naked 
 body cannot arouse prurient speculation. " Ana 
 lyze your feelings," he said, " and you will realize 
 that the erotic element hardly enters." Herter as 
 serted that the nude body, at a proper distance in 
 a beautiful pose, is always aesthetic. " I would 
 not know," he said, " how to represent sensuality 
 nude." An interesting point was made by Profes 
 sor Goetz. Often, in seeing a picture, a landscape, 
 we joyfully exclaim, " Why, I have witnessed that 
 effect before in nature." In a similar manner we 
 are more apt to appreciate the nude in sculpture 
 if we have stored in our minds perceptions of 
 beautiful nude bodies. This " sad late age " is ex 
 tremely poor in these; so poor, indeed, that the 
 public interest is almost exclusively confined to the 
 head, because we, most of us, have no opportuni 
 ties to see beautiful bodies. 
 
 The new art of nudity, as we have seen, has so 
 far been primarily defended from the point of 
 view of the sculptor. When the renaissance of 
 the Hellenic spirit in the twentieth century is com 
 plete, it will need no defense beyond its beauty. 
 The Muse of Nudity is not the youngest, but the
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 129 
 
 oldest of all the Muses. In her domain, the ex 
 tremes of civilization, the sophisticated and primi 
 tive nature, are blended. We are no more ready 
 for her than were the monks of the Middle Ages. 
 Before an audience composed, even partly, of Car 
 rie Nations and of Anthony Comstocks, the art 
 of nakedness would be a thing obscene. 
 
 The founders of our own New Theater would 
 never invite the tenth of the Muses to reveal with 
 in its sacred precincts the miracle of her loveliness. 
 This theater, declared Governor Hughes, at the 
 formal opening, November 6th, 1909, shall be 
 devoted to art. But it shall never become a 
 " museum of abnormalities." Yet what is all art 
 but a museum of abnormalities? Hamlet, Mac 
 beth, Lear, the tortured creatures of Hauptmann 
 and of Ibsen, are hardly conventional normal 
 types. In biology the exception proves the rule. 
 Art through the abnormal depicts the normal. 
 Perfectly normal people are perfectly dull. The 
 dramatic struggle calls for the contention between 
 conventional and eccentric social forces. 
 
 The province of art is to provide caviar for the 
 general. If the general refuse this fare, then, in 
 deed, are we in a difficult plight. Instead of intel 
 ligence endowed with millions, let us have mill 
 ions endowed with intelligence. Intelligent artis 
 tic appreciation is rare in native America. The 
 intellectual founder of the New Theater, Heinrich 
 Conried, was an Austrian subject. The first great
 
 i 3 o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 essentially American play, The Melting Pot, was 
 written by an English Jew. And it is perhaps sig 
 nificant that the first American author heard in 
 the New Theater bears the aromatic and un-Amer 
 ican name of Knoblauch. 
 
 Yet I am perhaps unjust to the American play 
 wright. Clyde Fitch's last play, The City, is almost 
 Elizabethan in its terror and its strength. Charles 
 Klein and Augustus Thomas may yet purge their 
 systems of the germs of moralomania. We shall 
 have to reckon with them again when they redis 
 cover that in the drama action speaks louder than 
 words. William Vaughn Moody, in a splendid 
 but isolated attack of forgetfulness, wrote 
 The Great Divide. We may at least hope that 
 he will forget himself again in the future. 
 Percy Mackaye always soars beyond his strength. 
 He is the Icarus of American drama. But his 
 daring, at least, is an encouraging omen. Edward 
 Sheldon, the latest product of Harvard's dramatic 
 nursery, aims to reconcile the Bowery drama with 
 the problem play. Eugene Walter, groping like 
 wise toward a new dramatic form which shall com 
 bine the antithetical principles espoused by the 
 Third Avenue Theater and the Theatre Antoine, 
 also draws upon the exhaustless well of melo 
 drama. We may say that melodrama degenerates 
 in his hands. In his third acts it is vice, not virtue, 
 that triumphs. His art seems to be melodrama in 
 verted. Here, however, degeneration applying
 
 INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 131 
 
 the term with scientific discrimination denotes 
 an upward step in evolution. From the decom 
 position of melodrama will issue, perhaps, the 
 drama of the future. 
 
 We have authors; we have theaters. Where 
 shall we find a public? In Paris, in Berlin, pre 
 mieres are public events. A new play is hotly dis 
 cussed. Actors are known to have been egged. 
 We view the stage with stony indifference. 
 Until Sothern's interpretation of Hamlet, or 
 Faversham's conception of a new play by Stephen 
 Phillips, is to us all a matter of vital and personal 
 interest, the New Theater will be only an arch of 
 promise in our theatrical sky.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THINGS LITERARY 
 
 I AM a great believer in antinomies. Every 
 truth, like the bee its sting, carries within it its 
 own negation. There is not one truth, but many. 
 No one has ever uttered more than a half truth. 
 Those who, like Whitman, attempt to express the 
 whole truth are necessarily inconsistent. Niet 
 zsche's Zarathustra utters a half truth. And the 
 Hebrew prophets have uttered a half truth. 
 Those who desire the whole truth must needs 
 reconcile the irreconcilable. They must harmon 
 ize the Sermon on the Mount with the egotistical 
 doctrines of Stirner. Life is a shining jewel. We 
 can never see it whole. We may only hope to re 
 flect the glint of some of its facets. 
 
 I am aware that I am dreadfully inconsistent. 
 But I am not ashamed. The Book of Life is full 
 of inconsistencies. Why should we attempt to 
 be consistent if the Author of all things has no 
 compunction in apparently contradicting himself? 
 Even if we had glimpses of the ultimate truth, 
 how could we express the infinite in terms of the 
 finite? Besides, we could be truthful, even in a 
 
 132
 
 THINGS LITERARY 133 
 
 limited sense, only with an intellectual double, 
 whose mind was a replica of our own. For those 
 whose mentality is on a slightly different plane 
 from ours we must translate our mental vibrations. 
 The symbols that convey one meaning to us may 
 convey antithetical notions to others. In order to 
 make our thoughts recognizable, we must disguise 
 them. We must lie, to be truthful. 
 
 I have in the past compared literary Germany 
 to a madhouse. Insanity, I insisted, was the bed 
 fellow of her genius. And I was perfectly right. 
 I have nothing to modify. I have stated perfectly 
 one half of the truth. I shall now contradict my 
 self flatly. I shall express the other half of this 
 puzzling antinomy. 
 
 If I were to describe the literary atmosphere of 
 Germany in one word, I should say that it is per 
 vaded by health. There is nothing of the sickly 
 spirit that stigmatizes the literature of the New 
 World. We have stunted the growth of letters. 
 We cram genius into the bed of Procrustes. Ger 
 many gives full scope to self-expression. We ask 
 brambles of the pomegranate tree. We prune 
 the poet's inspiration. We measure by the 
 same standard the pine tree and the hedge. 
 We have men of esprit, but we compel 
 them to hide their light under the bushel of our 
 stupidity. 
 
 Besides, we despise purely imaginative values 
 except in Wall Street. The late Richard Wat-
 
 134 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 son Gilder was highly elated when, at a festival of 
 the Felibres in France, he was introduced as " M. 
 le poete." 
 
 ' You see," he explained to me, " I had come 
 from a country where it is almost an insult to be 
 called a poet." 
 
 Our indifference to true creative ability is so in 
 tense that we have even driven our greatest imag 
 inative genius, barring Poe, from his proper field 
 of literary endeavor into the unfamiliar realm of 
 Arctic exploration. When Dr. Cook came back 
 to us as the discoverer of the North Pole, a dull 
 and meaningless feat, we hailed him as a na 
 tional hero. But when we began to suspect that 
 his tale was not a recital of vulgar fact, but the 
 indisputable evidence of high imaginative endow 
 ment, we flouted him! We have barred his bust 
 from the Hall of Fame, together with that of the 
 author of " Gordon Pym." Those who believe 
 with Wilde that the aim of art is lying, must place 
 Dr. Frederick A. Cook above Commander Robert 
 E. Peary. Anybody might discover the pole; but 
 not everybody could create highly-colored and 
 eloquent prose, hypnotizing two hemispheres with 
 its measured cadence. Even from the point of view 
 of mere human justice, it seems unfair that we, a 
 nation of fakers, should thus disown the greatest 
 exponent of our national trait. 
 
 We are more afraid of originality than of the 
 Devil. The " six best sellers " might all have
 
 THINGS LITERARY 135 
 
 been written by one man, or rather, by one wo 
 man. Our books, like our clothes and our morals, 
 are ready-made. In German letters it is person 
 ality that counts. Germany regards seriously only 
 those who have something to say. She is less con 
 cerned about the little niceties of expression. Our 
 books are written with uniform excellence in irre 
 proachable style. I am sure that most of our au 
 thors would pass the college entrance examinations 
 in English. I am equally sure that the most dis 
 tinguished German writers would be sadly de 
 ficient from the point of view of the manufacturers 
 of lingual patterns. Their style is individual, not 
 academic. 
 
 We are forced to write down to the mediocre 
 level of an imaginary public. We painstakingly 
 remove the vitals from the body of our writing. 
 Editors and publishers apparently have an exceed 
 ingly low opinion of their patron, the public. I 
 have more faith in the reader. His intelligence, I 
 admit, is not usually of a high order, but he cannot 
 be as inane as the fodder supplied to him by the 
 magazines. Occasionally an original idea some 
 how makes its way into print in spite of the editor, 
 and in spite of him scores a success. At once the 
 publisher slyly degrades it into a pattern. Abroad 
 authors are afraid of imitating even themselves. 
 We quench their genius in the monotony of the 
 treadmill. We value them merely for certain 
 products, just as we prize the stuffed goose for its
 
 136 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 torpid liver. Our literature is as sick as a torpid 
 goose. 
 
 Life, health, is development, variety, growth. 
 There is something distinctly diseased in the men 
 tal frame of authors who year in, year out, squeeze 
 from their cerebrums the same thin, colorless fluid. 
 We measure even the exact amount of the drivel 
 that shall ooze from their minds. We rigorously 
 regulate the bulk of a book. In Germany there is 
 a delightful variety in bookmaking and a corre 
 sponding variety in prices. An author writes be 
 cause he has something to say. When he has said 
 it, he stops. If he cannot express himself in one 
 volume, no publisher will dare to prescribe me 
 chanical limits to the flights of his inspiration. 
 
 The late Otto Julius Bierbaum was a typical 
 German literateur. Otto Julius Bierbaum was a 
 healthy literateur. He was healthier than the 
 editor of The Ladles' Home Journal. He was 
 healthy, because he was often morbid. He fully 
 revealed himself in his books. No American pub 
 lisher would have dared to publish his rhythmical 
 studies of passion. And the very bulk of his 
 books would have crushed his fortunes. Prinz 
 Kukuck, the most important essay in fiction of 
 his later years, like Gaul, is divided into three 
 parts, published in three expensive volumes of un 
 equal length. And it is Gallic in flavor, its sub-title 
 running thus: "Life, Adventures and Descent to 
 Hell of a Foluptuary." The book portrays strong
 
 THINGS LITERARY 137 
 
 normal passions and curious erotic vagaries. 
 There is a suggestion of Nero and a suggestion of 
 Borgia. 
 
 The circle of passion revolving in the pages be 
 fore us completes the cycle of human perversion, 
 from the sick passion of mad Roman Caesars to 
 mediaeval incest and the vices of Alexander VI. 
 The novelist never moralizes. He narrates inci 
 dents as they happen. But you feel that his 
 ethical code conflicts with the tables of Moses. 
 He is not ashamed of portraying the purely sen 
 sual. He avowedly loves the flesh, but, being a 
 modern, burdened down with the heritage of 
 Hamlet, he cannot divorce it from mind. He is 
 not in the least concerned about the reader's com 
 fort. He tarries for a hundred pages where he is 
 interested, and disposes of a decade in a sentence, 
 where he is not. But when I lay a book of his 
 aside, I feel, in the words of Whitman, that I 
 have touched a man. He was not the impersonal 
 narrator, but, like Dickens, confided in us as in a 
 friend. 
 
 The cultured American keeps his best as well 
 as his worst to himself. Even Crawford, for 
 whom I have always had a tender regard, never 
 fully revealed the depth and height of his being. 
 Bierbaum exposed both to our gaze. That is why 
 his books are of permanent value. Ships running 
 at half-speed will never traverse the ocean of 
 eternity. In the successor to Prinz Kukuck, Sell-
 
 i 3 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 same Geschichten, stories of the weird, Bierbaum 
 has given us mainly his worst. His mannerisms 
 are become unbearable. His reflections, tedious. 
 He is as garrulous as a parrot. The flower of 
 genius has run to seed. But that is inevitable, 
 natural, and therefore hardly a symptom of 
 disease. 
 
 While Bierbaum's vision of life is normal in 
 its total effect, Hans Heinz Ewers evolves out 
 of his sadistic imagination nightmares of cruelty 
 and lust. He is a Poe plus sex, minus style. 
 Ewers and his curious stories of obsession and car 
 nage are read as widely as Poe. We would have 
 shunned Poe if he had strayed into the byways of 
 sex, as he has strayed into the byways of horror. 
 And we would probably jail the publisher of 
 Ewers's fantastic short stories. We would cer 
 tainly regard the author as being beyond the pale. 
 
 Germany being less morbid is less squeamish 
 than we. She merely expects the poet to ride his 
 Pegasus skillfully. And no one is nai've enough 
 to confuse his literary performances with his pri 
 vate morals. I have not met Ewers, but I have 
 seen his picture and that of his wife, a charming 
 woman of somewhat more robust fiber than he. 
 Ewers seems to be a delicate, one might almost 
 say fragile, creature. I am sure that in life he 
 would turn in disgust from the dreadful visions 
 that delectate his readers. Which reminds me of 
 that bourgeois Maupassant, Heinz Tovote.
 
 THINGS LITERARY 139 
 
 Tovote's family life is an idyl in the German 
 Gomorrah. He is an adorable little fellow, with a 
 leaning to embonpoint. But his stories are very 
 naughty. Nevertheless, in his own narrow field 
 he is unparalleled. If I had a daughter, I would 
 gladly entrust her, unchaperoned, to the care of a 
 poet of passion. And if I had a son, I would no less 
 gladly choose a passional poetess for his com 
 panion. Like the proverbial dog whose melodious 
 voice constantly irritates our ear drums, the poet 
 of passion is comparatively innocuous. Notwith 
 standing his protestations, he will not bite. 
 
 The most ardent singer of the flesh in Germany, 
 Marie Madeleine, is the conventional wife of a 
 pensioned general. But upon her forehead gleams 
 the diadem of song. In her voluptuous, rhythmic 
 and wonderfully passionate poems she approaches 
 Swinburne himself. She lacks the knowledge of 
 books, the erudition of Swinburne. She surpasses 
 him in the knowledge of human passion. She has 
 sung of Antinous, and she has sung of Sappho, 
 and of the " white implacable Aphrodite." Her 
 passional studies are cries from the depths of her 
 potential selves. In reality, she is perfectly respect 
 able and perfectly bourgeoise. Her life is whole 
 some because it is complete. She is virtuous in her 
 private life, but a Faustina in song. Impulses 
 which, if suppressed, would have poisoned her life, 
 escape through the safety-valve of literary expres 
 sion. The antitoxin of genius disinfects them for
 
 140 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 us. No poet living to-day has breathed into his 
 song more voluptuous music than this: 
 
 Ich sah dem Blld die gauze Nacht, 
 Und in mlr stohnte dumpf das Tier, 
 All meine Sehnsucht schrie nach dir 
 Die ganze Nacht, die ganze Nacht. 
 ******* 
 
 Du Idchelst stolz " Ich hab's gewusst! " 
 Und weisst dock nicht lu'ie ich mich sehne 
 Zu graben meine Raubtierzahne 
 In deine nackte Jiinglingsbrust. 
 
 The genius of Marie Madeleine has found its 
 supreme embodiment in A uf Kypros, a collection 
 of verses published when she was a mere slip of a 
 girl. At once she became the fashion. Imitators 
 sprang up like fungi. But her first sonorous utter 
 ance was followed by imbecile and frivolous verse, 
 and mediocre fiction. In her later books, notably 
 in a volume entitled In Seligkeit und Siinden, she 
 has again redeemed herself. Her very uneven- 
 ness is a sign of health. Like Bierbaum, she sup 
 presses neither her best nor her worst, leaving the 
 verdict on the knees of the gods. 
 
 The German author, as I have said, is less pol 
 ished than we. He rises to greater heights and 
 descends to immeasurably lower levels. If an 
 author has once made a reputation for himself 
 among us in any peculiar field, he is secure unto
 
 THINGS LITERARY 141 
 
 the day of his death, unless he insists upon ventur 
 ing into unexplored regions. A new idea is fatal 
 to his reputation. Occasionally an intrepid writer 
 has dared to be original, but invariably the flesh- 
 pot has proved too strong a lure for him in the 
 end. Mark Twain has written some of the most 
 serious books of the century. He is the most 
 serious writer I know. But we refuse to treat his 
 book on Joan of Arc, or his masterful study of 
 the Shakespeare problem, with respectful consid 
 eration. We laugh at the clown, even if his 
 grimaces are convulsions of death. 
 
 In Germany, however, critics have no patience 
 with a man who repeats himself. The new plays 
 of Sudermann and of Hauptmann are in no way 
 inferior to the antecedent performances of their 
 authors. But Germany asks higher achievements 
 in divers fields, and is suspicious, moreover, of too 
 sure a technique. Ludwig Fulda, the translator of 
 Moliere and the Moliere of his epoch, has suf 
 fered all his life because a well-meaning and 
 deluded fairy has endowed him excessively with 
 verbal and metrical skill. 
 
 Modern Germans love the big things roughly 
 hewn out of stone. Michael Angelo and Rodin, 
 not Phidias, are to them the embodiments of 
 genius. Gerhardt Hauptmann has reached such a 
 degree of proficiency in his art that his admirers 
 have begun to suspect the genuine quality of his 
 gifts. They have turned away from him and
 
 142 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 raised his brother Karl upon their shields. Karl, 
 they say, is the greater poet, Gerhardt the greater 
 craftsman. Karl is surely a man of genius. But I 
 shall never forget the lovely face of Rautendelein, 
 sister to Peter Pan. Karl has not conjured a Rau 
 tendelein into being. His novels are masterly de 
 lineations of the lives of the lower classes. I have 
 no use for the deservedly poor, least of all in 
 fiction. Their diseases are so uninteresting. The 
 diseases of the cultured, like the pearl, that disease 
 of the oyster, are often of delicate texture. 
 
 Both brothers regard their work with a serious 
 ness that is terrifying in the sense in which 
 Niagara, or any other great cosmic manifestation, 
 is terrifying. American writers consider their 
 profession a trade. We have a sense of humor, at 
 least of caricature, but no sense of the dignity of 
 our calling. If success eludes the literary trades 
 man, he will readily change his literary complexion, 
 as a traveling salesman deserts men's clothing for 
 ladies' hose. Not the law of his growth, but the 
 demand of the market, diverts his talents into new 
 avenues. The law of growth determines the meta 
 morphoses of the genuine artist. The moment 
 European writers of reputation cease to grow, the 
 elect turn away from them, even if the rabble still 
 worship awhile in the forsaken sanctuary. 
 
 The European writer is ever goaded on by the 
 dread of displeasing the critical Grand Moguls 
 who pronounce his destiny. A critic may often be
 
 THINGS LITERARY 143 
 
 greater than the author whom he brilliantly mis 
 interprets. Such a critic is Alfred Kerr, whose 
 word is fate in the Neue Rundschau. He is dis 
 tinctly creative: he makes and he mars. Even the 
 greatest in literature owe their renown in part to 
 their critics. Faust and Hamlet are greater to 
 day than they were when their authors conceived 
 them, because the greatest critical minds of several 
 centuries have made them the storehouses of their 
 intellectual treasures. Every commentary adds a 
 new and connotative value to the original. 
 
 Critics are taken more seriously on the conti 
 nent than with us. But then, we may count our 
 creative critics on the fingers of one hand. James 
 Huneker may be said to be the index finger, point 
 ing the way to the new. Paul Elmer More is the 
 thumb, pointing backward. William Marion 
 Reedy is the middle finger. The little finger is 
 Percival Pollard. I cannot make up my mind as 
 to who is the fifth; but I suspect Michael Mona- 
 han. Germany and France each have one for 
 every finger and every toe. The wholesale fear 
 of the critics forces European writers to draw upon 
 that mysterious and exhaustless well of inspiration 
 which William James describes as the " second 
 wind " of the mind. 
 
 German literature, like French literature, is an 
 oligarchy. German authors write up to the few. 
 We write down to the many. The elect are swift 
 to recognize counterfeit values. They are swift
 
 i 4 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 to recognize even the uncut gem. Hugo Bertsch, 
 a German-American laborer, crude and untaught, 
 won instant and sensational recognition through 
 his novel, Die Geschwister. We would have 
 " turned down " his unorthographic copy with a 
 contemptuous smile. Hugo Bertsch, like Shakes 
 peare, writes better than he spells. Our novelists 
 spell better than they write. German writers give 
 us even their crudities they might be gems. The 
 idol heedlessly dragged to the junk shop may be 
 the true God after all! But the dead arm of 
 Solomon cannot hold those critical spirits in thrall. 
 Germany will not quench her thirst with stagnant 
 waters. 
 
 Not long ago I remarked, half in jest, to Karl 
 Hauptmann : " Who is greater, you or your 
 brother? " Whereupon Karl replied with fine 
 dignity: "Neither my brother's life work, nor 
 mine, is completed. I should look upon myself 
 as a corpse if it were. It is too early to close the 
 books. We have neither of us ceased to develop. 
 We are not ready yet to be judged." Both men 
 have passed the age of forty. Karl is almost fifty. 
 Had they been born among us, the grooves of 
 their lives would have been established forever. 
 Their epitaphs would lie all written out in the 
 pigeon-holes of the press. And precious little 
 would there be to add, though they live to the 
 Biblical age. But at this day no man can predict 
 what startling new developments may divert the
 
 THINGS LITERARY 145 
 
 genius of these brothers into unsuspected and 
 novel channels. 
 
 I might also have spoken of my friend, Johan 
 nes Schlaf, the father of German realism. Schlaf, 
 having run the gamut from realism to mysticism, 
 is again groping his way toward new ideals. Arno 
 Holz, his former brother in arms and letters, has 
 likewise passed through many curious metamor 
 phoses. At present he amuses himself by writing 
 poems without rhyme or meter, in the shape of in 
 verted pyramids, such as this. (I borrow the ex 
 cellent translation of my friend, William Ellery 
 Leonard.) 
 
 BUDDHA 
 
 By night around my temple grove 
 
 watch seventy brazen cows. 
 A thousand mottled stone lampions flicker. 
 
 Upon a red throne of lac 
 I sit in the Holy of Holies. 
 
 Over me 
 
 thro' the beams of sandalwood, 
 in the ceilings open square, 
 stand the stars. 
 
 I blink. 
 
 Were I now to rise up 
 my ivory shoulders would splinter the roof;
 
 146 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 and the oval diamond upon my brow 
 would stave-in the moon. 
 
 The chubby priests may snore away. 
 
 I rise not up. 
 
 I sit with legs crossed under 
 and observe my navel. 
 
 It is a blood red ruby 
 in a naked belly of gold. 
 
 Stephan George, the Viennese pre-Raphaelite, 
 has even reformed the German language. In his 
 curious pastels he employs an orthography dis 
 tinctly at war with usage. The genius of modern 
 Germany, alert and nervous, is always ready to hail 
 new stars and new gods. 
 
 It would be futile to deny the presence of a 
 morbid strain in continental letters. Certain writ 
 ers, like Ewers and the imitators of Marie Made 
 leine, are too strongly allured by the purely per 
 verse. But even corruption is not always without 
 beauty. In the first stages of cancer a woman's 
 skin is said to be almost pellucid. The Blessed 
 Damozels of Rossetti are distinctly consumptive. 
 Sickness, Heine says, is perhaps the ultimate cause 
 of creation. 
 
 Krankheit ist wol der letzte Grund 
 Des ganzen Schdpfungsdrangs gewesen, 
 Erschaffend wurde ich gesund, 
 Erschafend konnte ich genesen.
 
 THINGS LITERARY 147 
 
 Sickness in itself is merely nature's attempt to 
 regain her balance. Much that seems morbid in 
 modern German civilization merely indicates na 
 ture's struggle for health. The poison is not sup 
 pressed; it breaks out, runs its course, and insures 
 the health of the patient. The butterfly in its 
 ugly transitional stage impresses the student with 
 its promise of future beauty. And much that we 
 regard as diseased may thus be prophetic of a 
 larger culture. Viewed in this light, even the 
 atrocities of Simplicissimus and Jugend are molli 
 fied. Most comic journals and many books 
 published in Germany would be barred by pos 
 tal tyranny from the United States mails. Sim 
 plicissimus and Jugend, having been warned re 
 peatedly by our postal authorities, will regale 
 us in the future with editions resembling at 
 least in one respect the boy-choir of the 
 Vatican. 
 
 I have always entertained for letter carriers the 
 tender affection bestowed in olden times upon 
 couriers. The average letter carrier, I am sure, 
 is a man of strong moral principles, an impeccable 
 father and a peerless husband. He has passed 
 through the gate of the Civil Service examination. 
 He is a useful citizen. I have no grudge against 
 him. But if some Jack-in-office, or post-office, had 
 the preposterous presumption to inquire into my 
 literary morals, or to determine questions of ar 
 tistic finesse, I would unpleasantly remind him of
 
 148 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the fate of Marsyas; or, like Oberon, present him 
 with the decoration of Bottom. 
 
 The freedom of literature, as well as the free 
 dom of speech, is more unrestrained in the mon 
 archies of Europe than in the republic described 
 by an unconscious ironist as " the land of the 
 free." The postal clerk abroad who would dare 
 to lay hands on a work like the Kreutzer Sonata, 
 would be drowned in a flood of derision. We look 
 on with folded arms when the machinery of the 
 federal government, set into motion by an igno 
 rant clerk, crushes our vaunted freedom of speech. 
 And we forget that the monster of federal as 
 sumption, like the vampire, grows in strength with 
 each victim. 
 
 Of course, not every book published abroad 
 would be in danger of literary assassination in 
 America. Of late the genius of Ellen Key, the 
 distinguished Swede; and of Franciska Mann, and 
 Gabrielle Reuter and Ricarda Huch, her prophets 
 in Berlin, have been diverting the tide of fashion 
 from sanctuaries where amorous peccadilloes are 
 tantamount to devotion to new and saner ideals. 
 Although the outre and the morbid color modern 
 German literature, the solid successes of the last few 
 years, Jorn Uhl, Die Buddenbrucks, Konigliche 
 Hoheit, and Gotz Krafft, glow with health, not 
 putrescence. They are a splendid affirmation of 
 the inherent soundness of the German people.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 
 
 COPENHAGEN with its wharves and its ships 
 is a picturesque place. My knowledge of geog 
 raphy is rudimentary, but Denmark, I believe, is 
 surrounded by water. Strangely enough, the city 
 of Copenhagen can be reached directly by train 
 from Berlin. Twice in the journey a giant ferry 
 carries locomotive and cars with the passengers 
 across large stretches of water. Having once ar 
 rived in Copenhagen, you don't know what to do 
 with yourself. There are only four things of in-' 
 terest in Denmark: The .Glyptothek, the Thor- 
 waldsen Museum, George Brandes, and the grave 
 of Hamlet. After you have seen these, nothing 
 remains. The Glyptothek gladly throws open its 
 gates to you ; the Thorwaldsen Museum hospitably 
 invites you. I should not advise you to visit 
 George Brandes. But by all means visit the grave 
 of Hamlet. I have denied myself this pleasure. 
 Now throughout the years the vision of that grave 
 will lure my fancy to Denmark. 
 
 Professor Brandes informs me that Hamlet 
 was never in Elsinore; neither is he there buried. 
 
 149
 
 150 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 According to legend, Hamlet was a minor vassal 
 king in Jutland; Zealand, where Shakespeare dis 
 located him, knew him not. But when Shakes 
 peare's countrymen demanded to mingle their 
 tears with his ashes, an alert innkeeper, Marian- 
 lysts, of Elsinore, erected a stone-heap there some 
 twenty years ago, revered ever since by genera 
 tions of tourists as the grave of Ophelia's obese 
 and unsatisfactory lover. 
 
 The Professor, I fear, is an incurable pedant. 
 Those who direct their steps to Elsinore worship 
 the spirit of Hamlet. His skeleton is to them a 
 matter of utter indifference. Every grave is 
 spurious but for faith. The mockery of this tomb 
 would be no less hollow even if Hamlet's carcass 
 had stained the coffinboard with the obscene juices 
 of putrefaction. 
 
 Poets are lords of circumstance; they are lords 
 also of geography, from the terrace of Elsinore 
 to the coast of Bohemia. Too often, alas, the 
 reality fails to tally with fiction. The world, 
 therefore, owes a debt of gratitude to the imagina 
 tive innkeeper for having given to Hamlet's 
 ghost the local habitation prescribed by sentiment. 
 I am sure that to me at any rate Hamlet's grave, 
 unvisited, will be more inspiring than if I had 
 actually seen it. I never have the proper emotions 
 when I ought to have them. I should probably 
 feel very stupid if I were to encounter the ghost 
 of the Dane. I would not know how to take him.
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 151 
 
 A man whose temperament is defined by his faulty 
 digestion must change considerably when he him 
 self is digested. 
 
 In Copenhagen I saw all there is to be seen. 
 The vanity of my host was deeply pricked because 
 I stayed only two days. He scornfully suggested 
 that I should take half a day longer to study Nor 
 way and Sweden. 
 
 They are very proud of their Glyptothek in 
 Copenhagen. I have never cared for picture gal 
 leries and museums. Like anthologies, they are 
 always so dreadfully disappointing. Recently 
 somebody edited a compilation of English verse 
 sifted from several standard anthologies. I read 
 the book from cover to cover. There was not a 
 single poem but had been approved of by seven 
 previous compilers. And yet the final impression 
 was unsatisfactory. English literature had never 
 seemed so poverty-stricken to me. 
 
 If a poet of minor rank had fathered all these 
 pieces as the presumptive author, the volume, I 
 am convinced, would hardly have created more 
 than a ripple. Poems, like pictures, need frames. 
 There must be a personality behind them. Only 
 two or three poems clung to me after I had fin 
 ished the volume. In an anthology hundreds of 
 instruments seem to play as many tunes, all at the 
 same time, producing grotesque and incongruous 
 cacophonies. Only now and then an insistent 
 personal note penetrates the musical chaos.
 
 152 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 I remember none of the pictures and only two 
 or three pieces of sculpture exhibited in the Glyp- 
 tothek. There was Sinding, the brilliant young 
 Norseman, to whom the mystery of beauty is re 
 vealed in the naked body. Half Rodinesque, half 
 Greek, he clothes the flesh with new splendor. 
 And there was Limburg's " Violin Player " mak 
 ing rapturous music, heedless of the woman beside 
 him who has swooned with desire. Come to think 
 of it, my memory perhaps betrays me. I may have 
 seen the " Violin Player " only on a picture postal 
 card. But it is very real to me. And I think I 
 have seen it in Denmark. 
 
 In the Thorwaldsen Museum the ensculptured 
 thoughts of the artist are harmoniously linked to 
 gether. I sometimes envy the sculptor because his 
 ideas are so clearly visualized. We who dabble 
 in words are tortured, once in a while, by the un 
 reality of our medium. That, perhaps, is the 
 reason why Arthur Brisbane entertains himself by 
 manufacturing furniture at a loss. " Chairs," 
 he once said to me in the strange reaction that 
 overtakes the tired brain worker at times, " chairs 
 are real. But words, bah ! are nothings ! " 
 
 The Thorwaldsen Museum is the picture of 
 Thorwaldsen's brain; but of a brain vibrant no 
 more with emotion. Every statue is a living 
 monument to a dead idea. The moment a child 
 is born it is no longer an organic part of the 
 mother. The moment we express an opinion we
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 153 
 
 lose it. I am as indifferent to my poems, once 
 they have sprung into life, as the cockatoo is to 
 its little ones who have escaped from the egg. 
 This may be a horrible ornithological blunder. I 
 am not up in bird-lore. But I am sure there is 
 some kind of fowl that treats its progeny rather 
 badly. Thorwaldsen would probably feel like 
 walking in a graveyard, had he lived to see the 
 edifice raised in his honor. Every ornament 
 would have marked some dead emotion. 
 
 Thorwaldsen's statues and sculptures lack in 
 nothing save strength. To me their charm is con 
 ventional. I wonder whether he himself was never 
 bored with his sleepy lions and the meaningless 
 grace of his Cupids? Who knows, perhaps his 
 brain, too, had a chamber of horrors to which he 
 alone held the key. And while his soul was fright 
 ened by monstrous visions, his hands craftily 
 fashioned images pleasing and bland. 
 
 We who have succumbed to the spell of Rodin 
 are lost forever to the art of the Danish master. 
 We have thrilled with the lyric rapture of the 
 Frenchman's " Kiss," and with bated breath be 
 held the " Hand of God." Rodin is the incarna 
 tion of mental rebellion and Titanic strength. 
 Michael Angelo and Lucifer are his spiritual 
 progenitors. Thorwaldsen's body was the tem 
 poral mansion of some smiling Greek with ringlets 
 carefully trimmed, enamored of surface beauties, 
 neither profound nor subtle.
 
 i 5 4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Again disappointed, I wended my way to the 
 house of Professor Brandes. 
 
 They had told me strange stories of the Pro 
 fessor in Copenhagen, of his many peculiarities 
 and how conceited he was! They said that his 
 memoirs, upon the writing of which he was now 
 engaged, were chiefly the accounts of dinners 
 tendered to him in his long career, and that he 
 had carefully preserved all the menus. 
 
 I shall write freely of Brandes as one writes of 
 the dead. He is already an institution. Here 
 was a thinker and student famed throughout the 
 civilized world, but his immediate neighbors re 
 membered only his foibles ! They were proud of 
 him as of the Glyptothek, only a little less. He 
 was a " sight " to be pointed out to strangers. Of 
 the immense mental stature of the man who has 
 left his impress on Europe, they had hardly an 
 inkling. I was also told that Brandes receives a 
 small government pension, reckoned large in those 
 parts, of some few hundred dollars. And how 
 years ago he had deserted Denmark in anger be 
 cause a professorship he coveted had been with 
 held from him because of his racial affinity with 
 Moses. 
 
 This view apparently is erroneous. " Who," 
 he writes to me, " told you that I could not get in 
 office because I was a Jew? That is ridiculous; 
 the Jews have ten thousand offices in Denmark. 
 I have been these forty years the only Dane who
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 155 
 
 was a Greek, not a Hebrew. Our nation was be 
 fogged by Jewish Christian orthodoxy, and I was 
 compelled to leave the country because I was a 
 freethinker." 
 
 My Danish friends assured me that Brandes was 
 a crank, inaccessible to strangers, and asked me 
 whether I had an introduction to him. I explained 
 that I knew two of his intimate friends who 
 would surely have given me introductions, had I 
 known beforehand that I would visit Brandes on 
 my trip abroad. 
 
 These things I munched in my mind as I 
 climbed the stairs to the philosopher's simple 
 abode. A copy of Nineveh rested securely in a 
 side pocket of my coat. A seductive smile curled 
 my lips. 
 
 Without hesitation I pulled the bell. 
 
 A maid half opened the door, and upon my 
 question whether the Herr Professor was at home, 
 she mumbled something in Danish which I could 
 not understand, and shut the door in my face. 
 
 I waited a little while, and again rang the bell. 
 Again the maid appeared and listened to me with 
 impatience as I informed her in German that I 
 would plant myself in front of the door until she 
 had taken my card to the Herr Professor. She 
 snatched the card from me with an air of disgust, 
 and retreated behind the door. One, two, three, 
 four, five minutes passed, but no response was 
 vouchsafed to my offering.
 
 156 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Then, with grim determination, I rang the bell 
 for the third time. There was a sound of shuffling 
 steps. The door swung open. I caught a vision 
 of a magnificent head, white and immense. Like 
 an irate Jove, George Brandes glowered upon me. 
 
 "Good heavens!" he scowled, "what do you 
 want? I am working." 
 
 " I want to see you, Herr Professor." 
 
 " Everybody wants to see me. I have no time 
 for tourists. I'm not on exhibition. Good-bye ! " 
 
 Already the vision receded. One moment more, 
 and the door would have closed behind him. I 
 played my trump card. 
 
 " Hold ! " I cried, with conscious dignity. " I 
 am George Sylvester Viereck." 
 
 " Yes? " he replied, with a vacant stare. 
 
 I repeated my name with slow emphasis. I was 
 not impatient with the old man. There was no 
 shade of annoyance in my voice. But no gleam of 
 intelligence leaped from the eyes of the sage. 
 
 " I told you I was busy," he angrily reiterated. 
 " If I were to see everybody, I should have to 
 abandon my work." 
 
 " But I'm not everybody," I answered. " I 
 have come all the way from America to meet you. 
 I can't leave Denmark without talking to you. 
 That would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out." 
 
 He was moved. 
 
 " Come in," he said. 
 
 Thus I entered the Holy of Holies.
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 157 
 
 His studio, like Faust's, was lined with books. 
 There were books everywhere. Nothing else. 
 Books, and the dome of his furrowed head seemed 
 to fill the room. 
 
 " I do not come to you without introductions," 
 I said. " I bring you greetings from your old 
 friend," and I mentioned the name of a well- 
 known German writer. " He intended to write 
 me a note for you, but I did not get it in time." 
 
 " Too bad," Brandes rejoined, " I've never 
 heard of the man." 
 
 Nothing dismayed, I added sweetly: "And, of 
 course, our mutual friend James Huneker has en 
 trusted me with his compliments." 
 
 " Don't know him," the Sage of Copenhagen 
 snapped back. 
 
 " What ! " I exclaimed, " you don't know the 
 greatest American critic, the only man in America 
 who understands you? " 
 
 Brandes reflected. 
 
 " Of course," he said, " I know his books. He 
 is strangely brilliant for an American." 
 
 " He's half Irish, half Hungarian," I inter 
 jected. 
 
 " But I have never met him in person." 
 
 '* Well," I said, still undaunted, " I am a con 
 siderable personage myself." 
 
 He looked at me with amused incredulity. 
 
 " I am the author of several books. My poems 
 mark a new epoch in American literature. I have
 
 i 5 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 given a new impulse to the poetry of my age. Be 
 sides, for my recreation, I am editing two maga 
 zines." 
 
 " You're rather precocious," the sage retorted. 
 
 Then, as if groping in some far convolution of 
 his cerebrum for a reminiscence half erased from 
 the scroll, he asked me : " Are you related to Louis 
 Viereck, the former Socialist leader? " 
 
 " He is my father," I said. 
 
 " Strange ! " he exclaimed. " Do you know 
 that almost twenty-seven years ago Louis Viereck 
 sought refuge in my house from police persecu 
 tion?" 
 
 "How romantic!" I said, inwardly pleased. 
 " What was the matter? " 
 
 ' There was a Socialist Congress in Copen 
 hagen. The so-called ' Exception-laws ' against 
 the Socialists had just been framed by Bismarck, 
 and secret police spies dogged the steps of every 
 participant in the Congress. Our own police were 
 in league with the Germans, and hardly had your 
 father been seated when a policeman inquired for 
 him. I received him courteously, and explained 
 to him that I had never seen Mr. Viereck." 
 
 The ice being thus broken, we launched upon 
 conversation. 
 
 "You were not always so inaccessible, then?" 
 I queried. " You live strangely secluded for one 
 so famous." 
 
 " Yes," he replied, without vanity, and, let it
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 159 
 
 be added, without smiling, " I am famous. But 
 that is a meaningless phrase in view of the de 
 creasing sale of my books. In some cases the 
 sales have dwindled down to thirty or forty 
 copies." 
 
 " Impossible ! " I cried, " your publishers must 
 be guilty of miscalculations." 
 
 "No; some have been excellent friends to me; 
 nevertheless, only two copies of the German edition 
 of my Memoirs were actually sold. They haven't 
 even issued the second volume. But I do not ask 
 them. I am too proud." 
 
 " How could you have made your reputation, 
 if the sales of your books are so circumscribed?" 
 
 " I am sure I don't know. Some time ago I 
 was lionized in France. I was dragged from 
 banquet to banquet. Countless tributes were paid 
 to my genius. And yet, I knew that none of the 
 people who said sweet things to me had read my 
 books. Only one of my books had been issued in 
 French at that time. 
 
 " But of course some of my books have been 
 more fortunate than others. The complete edi 
 tion of my Danish writings was subscribed for 
 by no less than six thousand people between 1899 
 and 1902. That is a great number for a country 
 with a population of only two and one-half million 
 people; and naturally there were many editions of 
 single books previously and afterward. 
 
 " Aside from this success, the sales of my Dan-
 
 160 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 ish books have, however, averaged only seven hun 
 dred copies and after several successes have 
 brought me little money. My Lord Beaconsfield 
 was published by a prominent American house, 
 and no less than one hundred thousand copies were 
 sold, but I never received a cent in royalties. 
 There have been three editions of my complete 
 works in Russian, but I never saw a kopeka. All 
 my books have been translated into Polish, but I 
 have never received a heller. My Main Ten 
 dencies, six volumes, published in Germany in nine 
 large editions, did not net me a pfennig." 
 
 "But what of the magazines? I have heard 
 it said that they pay you fabulous prices." 
 
 A sad smile flickered across the Olympian 
 visage. 
 
 " When the twentieth century was about to be 
 ushered in, a prosperous German newspaper wrote 
 to me that they had planned to publish a full page 
 review of the nineteenth century by a poet, a 
 philosopher, and a scholar; and that I was their 
 man because I combined in my person the qualities 
 of the three. 
 
 " I don't care to write for newspapers. It de 
 tracts from my vitality and distracts me from my 
 real pursuits. But as the chance for such an 
 article occurs only once in an hundred years, and as 
 I didn't expect to live through another century, 
 I agreed to undertake the task for a remuneration 
 of five hundred crowns [one hundred and twenty-
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 161 
 
 five dollars]. They replied regretting that they 
 had written to me, and that in view of my un 
 reasonable demands they would be compelled to 
 enlist the services of less expensive pens." 
 
 " But surely American magazines pay you 
 well?" 
 
 ' They write to me occasionally for contribu 
 tions and ask me to name my own price. I don't 
 care to do that sort of thing for less than five hun 
 dred crowns. And they invariably pay me less 
 than one-half of the price I demand." 
 
 " That is almost incredible." 
 
 " I am old. The public is used to me now. 
 They want new people. Younger writers. I do 
 not blame them." 
 
 I wonder if Homer or Goethe would have ob 
 served with such colossal indifference the rising of 
 new suns on the literary horizon? And if the 
 yellow press would have put them on half 
 pay? 
 
 ' Why," Brandes continued, and his eyes swept 
 across an immense row of books reaching from one 
 end of the room to the other, " all my books pub 
 lished in the English language earn for me less 
 than fifty dollars per annum." 
 
 Fifty dollars ! Was such the interest paid by 
 us on the greatest outlay of intellectual capital the 
 world has known since the days of Voltaire! 
 
 " But," I questioned, " how about the series of 
 contemporary men of letters published under your
 
 1 62 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 editorship in the United States, in Germany, and 
 in England? " 
 
 " I have resigned the editorship. Subsequently, 
 the publisher offered me one hundred marks [twen 
 ty-five dollars] for the use of my name. 
 
 " And then," Brandes added, pointing contemp 
 tuously to a booklet in English, " this is merely 
 one chapter from one of my books. I suspect it 
 is too expensive to reprint them entirely in the 
 English language. I write only in Danish. As 
 a young man, I used to write German and English, 
 but I can't bother to rewrite my books several 
 times. I must devote myself to my studies." 
 
 There was something inspiring as well as pa 
 thetic in the figure of this world-renowned writer 
 who faithfully works night and day to embody 
 his visions for the hundred-odd people who form 
 his literary constituency. Swinburne said with de 
 lightful irony that he wrote for antiquity. Brandes 
 could never have said this. Nature, in his 
 anatomy, omitted the funny-bone. The giants of 
 literature are rarely endowed with a sense of 
 humor. 
 
 Brandes is tremendously serious, yet without il 
 lusions. ' There are only a few immortals," he 
 said. " In all the revolving years the world has 
 produced scarcely twelve; and I shall not be 
 among them. And yet, work alone is the cup 
 that stays and comforts us. In work we dimly 
 apprehend the grim exultation of God when He
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 163 
 
 moved on the face of the waters, and at His breath, 
 Life was." 
 
 " Material values," Brandes exclaimed, " can 
 never compensate us. There are no values but in 
 tellectual values. Hegel, the great German phi 
 losopher, placed the mind above all things. He 
 synthesized his philosophy in the phrase that a 
 wretched bon mot is greater than the sun. As 
 for me, I prefer the sun to a wretched bon mot. 
 But surely the mind of a Titan like Goethe out 
 balances almost a world." 
 
 " Do you then believe in the Superman? " 
 
 " I never take into my mouth words which 
 others have spit out. I despise such outworn pat 
 terns of speech more than I can express. But I 
 believe in the ego. I believe in great men. I 
 believe in great individualities. I don't believe 
 in the rabble." 
 
 " But," I said, " is not a great man merely the 
 mouthpiece of the rabble, the conscious exponent 
 of all that labors blindly in the sub-consciousness 
 of his people? " 
 
 " On the contrary," he replied, " all great men 
 have been at odds with their age. A great man's 
 life is one continuous battle with mediocrity, which 
 he outshines and which strives to obscure him. 
 When Shakespeare left London, not a single ban 
 quet was given in his honor. When he buried 
 himself in Stratford, mediocrity triumphed. But 
 now the laugh is on them. A great man expresses
 
 1 64 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 merely his own individuality, although it has been 
 said of Voltaire that he was not a man but an 
 epoch." 
 
 " But do you not believe in some kind of prog 
 ress? We who stand on the shoulders of Shake 
 speare should be able to sing more divinely than 
 he." 
 
 " There is little progress in the world. Much 
 that we call progress is merely the progressive 
 idiocy of the world. Technical progress and scien 
 tific progress have, I admit, wrought more changes 
 in my own lifetime than in all the years that have 
 revolved from the days of Julius Caesar to my 
 own birth. But in art it is different. There we 
 discover no trace of evolution, but only changing 
 cycles of blossom and decay. We have created 
 nothing greater than the ninth book of the Iliad, 
 or the Sistine paintings of Michael Angelo." 
 
 We exchanged courtesies, books. We spoke of 
 many things; of Anatole France, of Maeterlinck, 
 and of Denmark. The rest of the interview is 
 blurred from my memory. But I shall never for 
 get the Jovian head, white and immense, of George 
 Brandes. 
 
 There is something wonderful in this man. His 
 readers shrink to a handful from an hundred thou 
 sand; he still goes on in the unruffled tenor of his 
 intellectual pathway. A pessimist, he has no 
 hopes nor illusions. There is only the inspi 
 ration, perhaps the madness, of work. Like
 
 THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 165 
 
 Socrates, he follows blindly the dictates of his 
 daimon. 
 
 George Brandes embodies a force that is alien 
 to us. We would reckon a man who gave his 
 heart's blood to an unheeding world little more 
 than a fool. But it is only the fool divinely blind 
 to his own interest who shall save the world. 
 Standing reverently in the studio of Brandes, I 
 realized that literature, like religion, has its ascet 
 ics, its saints and its martyrs. George Brandes in 
 his library reminded me of some monk in a lone 
 some cloister decorating ancient parchments with 
 curious designs for the glory of God. Even thus, 
 patiently through the years, the sage of Copen 
 hagen illumines the Book of Life.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 
 
 GERMANY, to borrow the phrase of a teetotaler, 
 is the classic land of moderate drinking. Out of 
 Germany came the temperance drink, beer. Bac 
 chus Dionysios has found many singers. Gam- 
 brinus is unsung, if not unhonored, of poets. Yet 
 is not the hop as fragrant as the grape? I am 
 convinced that many poets who celebrate the vine 
 have been inspired by beer. But beer doesn't 
 rhyme well. We deem it a word without literary 
 traditions. Still, the history of beer is ancient 
 and honorable, and its literature reaches back to 
 the dusk of the Pagan gods. Julian, the Apostate, 
 was the first contributor to the literature of beer. 
 He wrote a satirical poem against it. He also 
 wrote satirical poems against the Christians. But 
 the pale Galilean has conquered. And, strange 
 as it may seem, beer has been a steady companion 
 of Christian expansion. 
 
 The watchword " Bibles and Beer " is applicable 
 in a sense unsuspected by those who reproachfully 
 coined it. When the Roman world power, the 
 bulwark of Paganism, was demolished, the beer of 
 
 166
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 167 
 
 the Teutons supplanted the Pagan wine. At first 
 the odor of heathen festivals attached to the brew 
 of Gambrinus. But the wary Church adopted it 
 along with the holidays of the heathens, and it 
 was brewed in the monasteries. And in the drink 
 ing songs of the Germans, pseans of Christ were 
 substituted for the pagans of Wotan. The Sal 
 vation Army and the Protestant churches seem to 
 adhere to the same ecclesiastical policy; they both 
 bawl devotional hymns to the rousing tunes of the 
 convivial songs of the German student. 
 
 The good monks of the Middle Ages served 
 Bacchus and Gambrinus with equal zeal. Chron 
 icles tell of a hop garden near the monastery of 
 Freising, in 768. The Swedish bishop and cele 
 brated chronicler, Olaf Magnus, remarked in 
 1502 that the wine in the South and the beer in 
 the North were steadily improving. The papal 
 legate, Raimundus Lucullus, justified his cognomen 
 by a rapturous tribute to the beer brewed in Ham 
 burg. Martin Luther was a jolly good fellow. 
 It goes without saying that he sanctioned beer. 
 
 Of course, the beer we drink to-day is superior 
 to the beer of the ancient Germans. If Julian 
 had drunk Pilsener, his poetic philippic against 
 beer would have remained forever unwritten. He 
 suffered his life long from indigestion. His tem 
 per in consequence was splenetic. He lost his 
 empire because his temper ran away with him. 
 Beer would have saved both his empire and his
 
 1 68 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 temper. If Hamlet had been acquainted with 
 Wiirzburger, pessimism would not have en 
 thralled him. His family skeleton would not 
 have rattled through five weary acts of Shake 
 speare. We might have had a comedy of Hamlet. 
 
 Beer is the lubricant in the wheels of history. 
 Its salutary effect on the digestion has been estab 
 lished by the Imperial German Board of Health. 
 And long before the German Empire had been 
 founded, a shrewd New Testament character ad 
 vised a young Apostle to indulge in mild alcoholic 
 beverages for his weak stomach's sake and his 
 often infirmities. Alcohol exercises a recognized 
 function in the religious ceremonies of all civilized 
 nations. The Mohammedans, who substitute 
 constant sexual stimulation for temporary alcoholic 
 excitement, have lagged behind in the race of the 
 world's evolution. If teetotalism ever vanquishes 
 temperance in the United States, we shall present 
 a spectacle more saddening than Turkey. 
 
 I have never been able to understand why so 
 many parsons seem to be anxious to controvert the 
 first miracle of the Lord. If Christ had been a 
 teetotaler, he would not have changed the water 
 into wine even at his mother's request. He would 
 have turned the wine into sarsaparilla. I am not 
 a Christian minister, but I would not dare dilute 
 with ineffectual words the miraculous wine of 
 Cana. 
 
 An American teetotaler has recently drawn an
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 169 
 
 interesting comparison between the American and 
 the continental method of receiving guests. 
 We, he fondly points out, salute our visitors by 
 urging upon them the necessity of lavatory pro 
 cedures. " Do you want to wash your hands? " 
 the American host solicitously inquires. The con 
 tinental host, however, welcomes his guest with an 
 honest libation. The point is well taken, and il 
 lustrates the superior manners of the civilized 
 European. Why should he insult his guests by 
 impugning their cleanliness? Let me inform the 
 writer, in case he should be again tempted to travel 
 abroad, that the continental host expects his guests 
 to wash their hands before they come to his house. 
 May he profit by this information ! 
 
 What should we offer a guest but the aromatic 
 blood of the hop, or the sparkling gold of the 
 grape? If we were Oriental despots, we might 
 add to these a beautiful slave girl. The laws of 
 the land and economic considerations unfortunately 
 compel us to dispense with these affecting tokens 
 of appreciation and friendship. Shall they also 
 bar wine? Libations have been poured wherever 
 friends have met since the days of Homer. The 
 wisdom of the East, and the traditions of our 
 Teutonic sires, both emphasize the philosophy of 
 drink. The soul, as Leibnitz has said, is a house 
 without windows. The lock of the door is in- 
 crusted with Care. Self-consciousness, with seven 
 iron bands, barricades the entrance. Alcohol is
 
 i yo CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the magic key that unlocks the door. Compara 
 tive strangers are transfigured and gladdened by 
 the magic of friendship when it has spoken its 
 Sesame. Irksome barriers, which normally only 
 years of close communion could have shattered, 
 are obliterated for the time being. The soul, 
 escaping from its cage for a little while, sings and 
 soars like a bird. 
 
 People on the continent, especially the Germans, 
 take their drinks with refinement. They drink 
 as they live aesthetically. We neither live nor 
 drink in beauty. We spend large amounts of 
 money on drinking. But the subtleties of the 
 Bacchic ceremonial escape us. We are novices 
 in the service of the good god Gambrinus. That 
 is the reason why our waiters despise us. You 
 must have noticed the supercilious servility and 
 condescending smile of the French or the German 
 waiter when you give him your order. He looks 
 down upon us as Barbarians. 
 
 The German thrives on the light glass of beer 
 or wine with his meals; whiskey he abhors. We 
 are killed off daily and hourly in the dairy restau 
 rants. We shall never have an American art 
 while we subsist largely on icewater. The pluto 
 cratic few are well provided in clubs and expensive 
 eating-places. The average American depends for 
 his lunch on the dairy. Saloons are often un 
 comfortable and obnoxious. What we need is 
 Childs' with the added inspiration of spirits. In
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 171 
 
 Germany, you find such places everywhere. The 
 most famous chain of restaurants is Aschinger's, 
 a sort of inspired Quids'. 
 
 Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, in his brochure en 
 titled The Gullet of Berlin, avers that every sec 
 ond house in the German metropolis is a place 
 where alcohol in some form is vended. Yet 
 drunkenness is almost unknown. That is because 
 people refrain, as a rule, from strong liquor. I 
 am not one of those who would bar even liquor. 
 There are times when it is both safe and delightful 
 to take a cordial. But a cordial isn't a drink. 
 It is a stimulant, and, taken in excess, a 
 poison. Until we can imprint indelibly upon 
 our brains the difference between a drink and a 
 stimulant, let us keep our hands from the 
 whiskey flagon. Who, by the way, is the god 
 of Cognac? 
 
 We have the deplorable tendency to vulgarize 
 things. We cheapen literature in magazines. 
 The Sunday Supplement is the degradation of art. 
 We degrade marriage and love in the court-room. 
 And we make drinking abominable through vulgar 
 and injudicious excesses. We are like the early 
 Christians who dethroned the gods of the Pagans 
 and made them monstrous and wicked. Jupiter 
 was anathematized as a devil. Mercury was 
 looked upon as a thief. Phoebus Apollo became 
 an evil sorcerer, Cupid an imp of hell, and the 
 mother of Cupid
 
 172 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 The obscure Venus of the hollow hill, 
 
 The thing transformed that was the Cytherean, 
 
 With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine. . . . 
 
 But the woe of the ancient gods was not ended. 
 It remained to the New World to contort the love 
 liness of Bacchus and the benign smile of Gam- 
 brinus into the hideous grimace of the Demon 
 Rum. 
 
 Germany, as I have said, is the mother of mod 
 eration. We can learn from her, but we can learn 
 more from Denmark. The Germans are naturally 
 moderate. The Danes incline to drunkenness. 
 And we, I am afraid, are more like Danes than 
 Germans. There is a certain instability in our 
 national temperament that shall no doubt disap 
 pear when the fusion of races has produced the 
 American type. 
 
 The Danish brewing industry is of recent 
 growth. In 1840, only one hundred and four 
 teen persons, all in all, were engaged in the busi 
 ness, including the workmen. In those days De 
 mon Rum held undisputed sway over Denmark. 
 The Danes wer drowned in liquor. Their 
 bodies, soaked with rum, withstood the teeth of 
 corruption in the grave. It was dangerous to 
 strike a match in the propinquity of one of Ham 
 let's compatriots. Perhaps the plight of the Dan 
 ish people and of their neighbors, the Swedes, has 
 been responsible for the safety match. I am,
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 173 
 
 however, not prepared to make an affidavit on 
 this. 
 
 At any rate, about 1870, the temperance wave 
 struck the little kingdom. The leaders of the 
 movement discerned with rare sagacity that intem 
 perance could be fought only with a light alcoholic 
 beverage. They talked to the brewers, and the 
 brewers talked to each other. After some scratch 
 ing of heads, they finally produced a light beer 
 pleasant to the taste, containing a small percentage 
 of alcohol. Later on the State took a hand in 
 the matter by levying a heavy tax on all beers 
 containing more than 2 1-4 per cent, of alcohol 
 by weight. Beer with only 21-4 per cent, of 
 alcohol was not taxed at all. The consequence 
 was that all breweries opened up plants for the 
 production of temperance beer. 
 
 One-half of all the beer produced in Denmark 
 is temperance beer. They speak of this beer as 
 " non-alcoholic." Avowed advocates of tem 
 perance relish it. It is kept on tap in every sa 
 loon. If you go to Denmark, by all means try 
 " non-alcoholic " Pilsener and " non-alcoholic " 
 Muenchener. The Danish brewer is forbidden 
 by law to brew beer with over six per cent, alco 
 hol. Beer has almost entirely supplanted rum 
 in Denmark. It is beer alone that has saved 
 Denmark and Sweden from toppling to drunk 
 ards' graves. If I were a painter, I would de 
 pict Temperance with a jug of foaming Pilsener
 
 174 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 bearing the legend: "In this sign thou shalt 
 conquer." 
 
 Denmark, too, has a few extremists who clamor 
 for the total elimination of alcohol. They have 
 established model saloons, where a drink called 
 " Sinalco," or " Liquorless," is vended. With 
 heroic determination I tasted this sickening con 
 coction. The innkeeper, a retired officer of the 
 army, looked at me half in pity, half in scorn. 
 "Do you drink this horrid stuff?" I queried. 
 "Yes," he replied; "in fact, 'Sinalco' is excel 
 lent with an admixture of whiskey." That, it 
 seems to me, is an amusing illustration of the 
 failure of absolute prohibition. 
 
 Recently an " International Association against 
 the Exaggeration of the Opponents of Alcohol " 
 has been founded in Berlin. The reports of the 
 association will be published regularly in a schol 
 arly manner. Their object will be truth, not 
 propaganda. Their experiments will tend to dis 
 prove once for all that alcohol is an absolute poi 
 son and that moderate indulgence in alcoholic 
 beverages necessarily leads to intemperance. They 
 will settle the question definitely. If the result 
 of their scientific investigations should lead them 
 to contrary, unanticipated conclusions, they will not 
 hesitate to confess defeat. But that exigency can 
 not arise. It would contradict the experiences of 
 mankind from the pre-Christian era to Christ, 
 from Christ to his Vicars in Rome, and reverse
 
 GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 175 
 
 the verdict of science from Aristotle to Munster- 
 berg. 
 
 It was Miinsterberg who recently knocked the 
 bottom out of the prohibition argument. He re 
 stated for the New World the experience of the 
 Old when he affirmed that the human system 
 absolutely needs a stimulus of some kind. If we 
 abolish alcohol, sexual and other irregularities will 
 take its place. The Anti-Liquor people were 
 foaming at the mouth. Miinsterberg's argu 
 ments could not be shaken nor his authority ques 
 tioned. 
 
 The professional prohibitionists remind me of 
 the exorcists of olden days. The people came 
 to them to drive out devils. The tribes of magi 
 cians and medicine men waxed fat and happy, 
 until humanity discovered that there were no 
 devils at all, and that, at any rate, they could not 
 be driven out. The antagonists of temperance 
 in the prohibition camp have humbugged the 
 American people by their pretense of driving out 
 Old Nick, when lo, Professor Miinsterberg lifted 
 the veil from their sham, and we discovered that 
 alcohol was not a devil. 
 
 Meanwhile Demon Rum thrived and flourished, 
 until he has come to be really a menace. You 
 can fight wildfire effectually only with fire. You 
 can fight liquor only with beer. But, of course, 
 had the Demon been properly subjugated, the 
 officials of the Anti-Saloon League would have
 
 176 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 been out of a job. It's a mighty dangerous thing 
 to oppose an enemy by mercenaries whose existence 
 depends on keeping that enemy alive ! 
 
 They are very clever, these Anti-Saloon Lea 
 guers. But when they're up against an honest 
 man, they don't understand. They invented a 
 pretty little trap for the Harvard professor. 
 Through three different literary agencies they 
 swamped him with flattering offers from an al 
 leged group of brewers who were very anxious 
 indeed to have him write an article on the ad 
 vantage of drinking beer " Money no object." 
 The professor dropped the missives into his waste- 
 paper basket. 
 
 Let those who favor total abstinence follow 
 the lead of the new International Association. 
 Let them investigate coolly and calmly. 
 Meanwhile let us profit by the experience of 
 Europe. Triumphantly on an ocean of beer 
 the Ship of Temperance reaches its destined haven.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WE AND EUROPE 
 
 HAVING explained at some length how I re 
 gard Europe, let us now discuss how Europe re 
 gards us. Permit me to state right here that in 
 using the plural of the first person I am not re 
 ferring to myself, but to the United States of 
 America. 
 
 Europe looks upon us as the woman entre 
 trente et quarante looks upon a boy of eighteen. 
 If I were unkind, I might add that she regards 
 us as a woman of moderate means regards the son 
 of a millionaire. Every American is supposed to 
 be first cousin to Croesus. Selfishness is certainly 
 mixed with Madame Europe's sensuous delight in 
 us. She is quite prepared to borrow money from 
 us. Her fondness for us nevertheless is perfectly 
 genuine. She is partial to striplings, a sweet 
 little woman, with the delightful perversion of the 
 fascinating age so graphically depicted by Balzac. 
 We stir her sensually, just as the continental man 
 stirs the American woman. 
 
 Europe is in love with our primitiveness. Our 
 young Barbarians all at play kindle in her a pas- 
 
 177
 
 178 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 sional conflagration. She forgives the uncouth- 
 ness of our ideas because we are gloriously young. 
 Our awkwardness is to her a symbol of masculine 
 robustness. We exert upon her the fascination 
 of a Caliban. She does not realize as yet that 
 we have lost the virile earthiness of Caliban with 
 out having lost our crudity. She accepts our 
 drafts on the future because she never suspects 
 that we may, in the end, default payment. 
 
 Of course, at present she does not take us quite 
 seriously. There is nothing that bars a book 
 from success in England as effectually as an Amer 
 ican furore. I know, for that is what hap 
 pened to me. Germany reads our books occa 
 sionally, but always with a smile of amusement. 
 She reads them half ashamed, as we read " Nick 
 Carter." Still, our vitality impresses the cultured 
 and effete European. He admires at least the 
 strenuosity of two representative and dynamic 
 American types : Roosevelt and Barnum. 
 
 We are forgiven much because we are regarded 
 as being still outside the pale of civilization. 
 Europe will not be surprised at anything we may 
 do. u American " and " grotesquely vulgar " are 
 almost synonymous terms. The newspapers espe 
 cially are responsible for the most absurd miscon 
 ceptions of the American character. 
 
 There was a time when one might have inferred 
 that the inimitable Baron von Munchausen had 
 left innumerable lineal descendants with a genius
 
 WE AND EUROPE 179 
 
 for journalism, and that all were in the New 
 World as correspondents for dailies in Berlin. 
 Many of his progeny are still engaged in their 
 successful conspiracy against truth; but, in spite of 
 their efforts, a saner understanding of us has per 
 meated the German cerebrum. For this trans 
 formation we are chiefly indebted to that exchange 
 of intellectual commodities christened Kulturaus- 
 tausch by the Germans. 
 
 On the wave of this movement a vast number 
 of able observers, men of acumen and insight, 
 have visited the United States and embodied their 
 impressions in divers publications. Some of their 
 books most of them are sheer nonsense. In 
 a few, however, the wheat outweighs the chaff. 
 
 Ludwig Fulda's American impressions are 
 avowedly personal and sketchy. Nevertheless, he 
 has made some shrewd and felicitous observations. 
 Von Polenz, the late novelist, is responsible for a 
 very readable and altogether remarkable American 
 book. 
 
 Professor Hugo Miinsterberg has done for 
 Germany what Bryce has done for England. His 
 book on America is an inquiry into the essential 
 and fundamental American idea. It is a large 
 interpretation of our national life. H. G. Wells 
 alone has developed, in his prophetic vision of 
 our future, similarly stupendous horizons. H. G. 
 Wells and the Harvard professor are intellectual 
 kinsmen. Both men have in common the analyt-
 
 i8o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 ical faculty of the man of science and the 
 quick intuition of poets. (Professor Miinster- 
 berg, I may here betray in parenthesis, is the 
 author of a book of strangely chiseled and pas 
 sionate verse.) 
 
 Wells and Miinsterberg illumine with ultra 
 violet rays the obscurest crevices of individual and 
 racial psychology. Wells somewhere says that 
 the figure of Miinsterberg stands out in bold re 
 lief from his Harvard colleagues by its German 
 characteristics. I think for once Mr. Wells is 
 mistaken. Miinsterberg would be equally con 
 spicuous in any company of men, at home or 
 abroad. We look upon him, however, as a fixture 
 in our own intellectual household. His American 
 traits are as pronounced as his German peculiari 
 ties. He is a citizen of the world, drawing his 
 strength from many civilizations. We may hope 
 that this type, almost lost in Europe the poets 
 and scholars of the Renaissance were its only pre 
 cursors may rise modernized and transfigured 
 from the crucible of American civilization. 
 
 It is the foreigner who is most apt in character 
 izing the peculiarities of a people. Ludwig Max 
 Goldberger, Privy Councilor to the Kaiser, has 
 clinched in one significant phrase all that the 
 New World stands for in the eyes of the Old. 
 We are the land of " unlimited possibilities." 
 That is what makes us so interesting to Europe. 
 Like our own Rip Van Winkle, we have slumbered
 
 WE AND EUROPE 181 
 
 for centuries. In fact, we have hardly rubbed our 
 eyes awake since we drove the Redcoats away. 
 The awakening of America will be more startling 
 than the awakening of China. 
 
 As an economist, Goldberger's primary interest 
 has been in industrial problems. His book is a 
 good book, a big book. The man himself is a 
 powerful agent of the culture exchange. It is 
 one of the chief characteristics of being a coun 
 cilor that the Emperor never requires one's coun 
 sel. Goldberger's case is a brilliant exception. 
 Whenever an American topic clouds the horizon 
 of discussion, the government as well as the press 
 turn to him for illumination. 
 
 Goldberger is only one of the nuclei in a large 
 circle of eminent men whose sympathies are al 
 ways enlisted in affairs of mutual benefit to Ger 
 many and the United States. There is, above all, 
 von Holleben, the polished and jovial former am 
 bassador. His Excellency, while advanced in 
 years, is a potent factor in German politics. It 
 was von Holleben who first recognized the im 
 portance of the university as a postilion d'amour 
 between nations. Professors Brandl and Pasz- 
 kowski, both of the University of Berlin, are ar 
 dent supporters of the close intellectual courtship 
 between their country and ours. Both have visited 
 the United States repeatedly. Paszkowski is the 
 director of the Official University Information Bu 
 reau, through which he directs and, to a certain
 
 182 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 extent, controls the exchange of students. Pro 
 fessor Schiemann, a friend of the Kaiser, and an 
 authority on political subjects, devotes no small 
 part of his attention to us. Two ministers of 
 state, Hentig and Moeller, have also made special 
 investigations of American institutions. The 
 prime mover of the whole American agitation, 
 however, is that Prince of Peace, William II. 
 
 It has been an open secret for many years that 
 it is the wish of William's heart to discover Amer 
 ica for himself. I know positively that not very 
 long ago every preparation for his departure to 
 the New World had been made with the profound 
 secrecy characteristic of German diplomacy. The 
 German Ambassador in Washington had carefully 
 mapped out plans for the safety of the monarch. 
 The Foreign Office, however, was opposed to the 
 visit and at the last moment prevailed upon the 
 Emperor to abandon his project, for reasons of 
 international etiquette. The inability of the Presi 
 dent of the United States to reciprocate the cour 
 tesy of an imperial visit, while vested with the 
 sovereignty of his office, thwarted what would 
 have been an historic event of incalculable im 
 portance. 
 
 I am felicitating myself that my brief sojourn 
 in Berlin has been a factor, however slight, in 
 crystallizing the pro-American sentiment. We are 
 all urged by the deep-rooted instinct, identical 
 perhaps with the will to live, that prompts us to
 
 WE AND EUROPE 183 
 
 leave behind us, of the various phases of our exist 
 ence, traces more permanent than ourselves. 
 
 To that instinct are we indebted for art. We 
 owe to it poetry, photography, music and sculp 
 ture. The child writing upon the sand, or Michael 
 Angelo writing in marble; the Alpine climber im 
 printing his futile initials upon the ironic face of 
 the rock, and Shakespeare embalming his love in 
 a sonnet all are swayed by the same masterful 
 impulse, to perpetuate the perennially transient. 
 The Church itself rose in response to this impulse 
 in Jesus; He lives in the bread and wine of com 
 munion. And is not marriage likewise the issue 
 of the desire to imprison eternally fugitive emo 
 tions? 
 
 While I have founded neither a household nor 
 a religion, I have at least commemorated my Ber 
 lin days in the German-American Evening. This 
 institution for as such it may now be regarded 
 leaped Athene-like from my brain when I de 
 livered a lecture before a brilliant bi-lingual assem 
 blage at the Hotel de Rome, in a banquet hall 
 consecrated by exchange-professorial tradition to 
 things American in the capital of the Kaiser. The 
 lecture, subsequently repeated before the Colonial 
 Society and the sovereign Burgomaster of Ham 
 burg, outlined German influences on American 
 civilization. The invitations bore the names of 
 several ambassadors, ministers of state, privy coun 
 cilors, and of distinguished professors. I men-
 
 1 84 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 tion these facts because they are significant of the 
 interest entertained among the dominant intellec 
 tual minority in ambassadors from the New 
 World, be they diplomats, pedagogues or poets. 
 
 The support of this solid faction is more im 
 portant than the support of the people. By this 
 I do not intimate that the people are unfriendly 
 to us, but we cannot ask untutored brains to grasp 
 the actual import to them of a distant continent 
 teeming with millions of human atoms. The Ger 
 man people at large regard us still through the 
 romantic haze of Cooper's tales. A few of the 
 more advanced eye us through the spectacles of 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam's fantastical description of 
 Edison, the magician. 
 
 We, being less imaginative, are even more un 
 just to the Germans. Our knowledge of Germany 
 is largely deduced from Viennese comic operas, 
 and the novels of George Barr McCutcheon. We 
 are, however, equally ignorant of our own coun 
 try. We have not even a clear mental image of 
 Missouri or Texas. We certainly have no defi 
 nite knowledge of the determining ethnic factors 
 in the sum of our racial characteristics. 
 
 We are satisfied that we have received our cul 
 ture, as well as our language, from the Pilgrim 
 Fathers. We look upon England as our mother, 
 although we are no less closely related to the coun 
 try of Nietzsche and Frederick the Great. The 
 facts may be gathered from the bulky volumes of
 
 WE AND EUROPE 185 
 
 learned professors. Read, for instance, Professor 
 Faust. I refuse to weigh down the good ship of 
 my style with statistics. Statistics are proverbially 
 mendacious. The German influence by far sur 
 passes the German influx. 
 
 We are a Germanic, not an Anglo-Saxon people. 
 The Norseman discovered America five hundred 
 years before Columbus. And despite the historical 
 evidence to the contrary, the Dutch still hold New 
 York. Pennsylvania was on the point of making 
 German the official state language. In the year 
 before the Declaration of Independence, a group 
 of Germans in Philadelphia issued a similar procla 
 mation defying the King. German money fed the 
 flame of the Revolution when it was almost ex 
 hausted. Frederick the Great was the first Euro 
 pean monarch who officially recognized American 
 independence. The Kaiser in courting America 
 merely continues the policy of his ancestor. The 
 Emancipation of the Slaves and the Fifteenth 
 Amendment, I regret to say, must also, at least in 
 part, be credited to the Germans. 
 
 The Germans are the salt of the earth, the 
 chosen people of the New Order. The French 
 man, Gobineau, and the Englishman, Professor 
 Chamberlain of the University of Vienna, have 
 startled the world by rewriting history authenti 
 cally from the point of view of the Aryan. The 
 most radical of their disciples claim the universe 
 for the Germans. Even Jesus, we are told, be-
 
 1 86 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 longed to a tribe suffused with Aryan-Germanic 
 blood. I am not prepared to maintain that the Cru 
 cified was a German, but I am convinced that Pilate, 
 his judge, was, as the Pan-Germans claim, Ger 
 manic by blood. This theory bears the earmark 
 of psychological truth. I can touch it and feel it. 
 I dearly love to think that the Roman Governor 
 may have been one of my forbears. He evidently 
 was one of the forbears of Kant. " What is 
 truth? " the eternal query ringing down the ages 
 could have sprung only from the lips and the 
 brooding brain of a Teuton. 
 
 Greece, in the days of its bloom, continues the 
 Pan-German argument, was a nation purely Ger 
 manic. (I am reminded here again of the purely 
 Germanic features of Plato.) When the German 
 blood ebbed away, corruption and corrosion poi 
 soned the Athenian body politic. These hypothe 
 ses are plausible if fantastic, although I suspect 
 that their authors have stretched their point until 
 it resembles a man, naturally short in stature, who 
 has rested a night under the roof of Procrustes. 
 
 We need not draw upon mythology, however, 
 to convince ourselves that English is merely a cor 
 rupted Low German dialect. (Remember, dear 
 reader, that I have always insisted upon the aes 
 thetic qualities of corruption.) Our education, 
 our art, and our science are ineradicably German. 
 Our soil itself welcomes the German. The Eng 
 lishman is, after all, only a German with a Norman
 
 WE AND EUROPE 187 
 
 veneer. In America the veneer drops off. By 
 brain-fiber and by blood we are more German than 
 English. These reflections are not mine, I am 
 sorry to say, but emanate from an Anglo-Amer 
 ican, Professor John W. Burgess, that excellent 
 friend of the Kaiser. Professor Marion D. 
 Learned, of the University of Pennsylvania, speaks 
 of himself as a " Yankee-German "; and the dis 
 tinguished Goethe student, Professor Calvin 
 Thomas of Columbia, refers to himself as a " Ger 
 man-American by elective affinity." 
 
 Of course, I have used the word " German " 
 in the broader sense of Germanic. My readers, 
 like those of Plato, must accustom themselves to 
 subtle discriminations. The Germans, as distin 
 guished from their Anglo-Saxon cousins, have a 
 vital function in the making of our nation. They 
 furnish an antidote to the venom of Puritanism. 
 I myself have always supplied that antidote lib 
 erally. 
 
 The victory of the liberal Teutonic spirit is 
 clearly and perfectly foreshadowed in the two fore 
 most Americans politically, Roosevelt and Taft. 
 Theodore, with all his faults, is not, thank 
 Heaven, a Puritan. W. H. Taft, whom I have 
 always loved for the Shakespearean flavor of his 
 initials, is a powerful champion of broad tolerance. 
 
 But I have been drifting upon the perilous seas 
 of ethnological speculation. Let us rub the magic 
 ring, and presto, we are back once more where
 
 1 88 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 we started, in the brilliantly lighted hall of the 
 Hotel de Rome. Tout Berlin is present and ap 
 parently interested, and the motion is made and 
 carried to perpetuate the German-American Even 
 ing. 
 
 The principal speaker of the second German- 
 American Evening, six months later, was the 
 author of my being. Let me state that I am not 
 alluding to my father in Heaven, but to my father 
 on earth. The third German-American Evening 
 was an elaborate occasion. Grand Admiral von 
 Koster, newly returned from the Hudson-Fulton 
 celebration, October, 1909 (I mention the date for 
 the benefit of posterity), rendered his homage to 
 the American people. Dr. Wheeler of the Uni 
 versity of California, and Professor Moore of 
 Harvard, addressed the assemblage in English. 
 
 I hope that the German-American Evening will 
 constitute a permanent forum for the discussion 
 of things German-American in Berlin. But I shall 
 make no such prediction, lest three hundred years 
 from this writing some spectacled, post-graduate 
 student, having lampooned Shakespeare's geogra 
 phy, impeach my historical prophecy in an elabo 
 rate dissertation. 
 
 I wonder what would have happened if a cer 
 tain Distinguished Personage had scaled the plat 
 form on one of the German-American Evenings, 
 and revealed to a listening world what privately 
 he has confided to me.
 
 WE AND EUROPE 189 
 
 Let me say right here that it will be quite im 
 possible to fathom his identity. The things he 
 said to me were so startling that, had they been 
 said by a man of lesser caliber, I should not here 
 set them down. The interview took place at his 
 dwelling. I shall not describe the dwelling. I 
 shall not describe even the room. I don't know 
 that I could describe it. The moment he entered 
 I saw only his eyes. Strange eyes they were, pierc 
 ing, like those of a visionary. He gazed at me 
 in a way that almost gave me the creeps. His 
 eyes seemed to look straight through me. I don't 
 like people to see through me. That is the reason 
 I shall never marry a clever woman. Of course, 
 I won't be able to help it, if she insists on marry 
 ing me. 
 
 He looked at me for five minutes. Then he 
 spoke. There were no commonplaces in what he 
 said, no conversational mortar to fill the cracks of 
 silence. Gradually I regained my self-possession. 
 We came to talk of America. I painted in glow 
 ing colors the invincibility of the young republic. 
 I always talk well of my country behind her back. 
 
 1 Yes," he said, slowly, deliberately. " Your re 
 sources are boundless, and yet there are dangers." 
 
 'What are these dangers?" 
 
 " Grave and terrible perils that will force you 
 to lean upon the staff of the Old World. 
 
 ' There is, in the first place, the Social Danger. 
 Some of you have realized that. The forces of
 
 190 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 Anarchy and Capitalism are close to a clash. You 
 may smile, but I say to you that a revolution is 
 imminent. You have eyes that see not, and your 
 ears are deaf. Perhaps Taft will lead you Moses- 
 like out of the wilderness. But you do not realize 
 that you have lost your way. Reports of violence, 
 conflict and lawlessness, accumulate day by day. 
 We over here take note of them; you do 
 not. 
 
 " You are so big that you lose sight of the 
 whole. You know nothing of the country at large. 
 Your newspapers are provincial. Your interests 
 are local. The American press fails in its duty to 
 you. Unpleasant facts are kept out of print. 
 Everything relating to social conflicts is prettily 
 dressed up before it is meted out to you. Your 
 papers print every word of some sensational trial, 
 but I look in vain for reports of the doings of Con 
 gress. The speeches of your representatives are 
 buried in the Congressional Record. The opinions 
 of amiable criminals and strumpets are commented 
 upon in press-room and pulpit. You are chatter 
 ing monkeys, brainlessly absorbed in the present, 
 unheedful of the imminent earthquake. We hear 
 its grumblings across the sea. Like the nobles 
 of the court of Louis XVI, you dance in the 
 shadow of the guillotine." 
 
 I looked at him questioningly. He was not 
 jesting. Slowly, deliberate, he continued: 
 
 " There is a danger even greater than a revolu-
 
 WE AND EUROPE 191 
 
 tion, and one from which there is no escape. I 
 think that you as a people do not realize the im 
 mensity of your negro problem. There is no way 
 to prevent the slow amalgamation of races. The 
 inferior race will drag you down. History and 
 science indorse my view. There is no possibility 
 of eliminating that black tumor from your na 
 tional system. By the laws of racial osmosis, you 
 cannot prevent it from staining the skins and the 
 brain-cells of your descendants. In perhaps two 
 or three hundred years you will be a nation of 
 octoroons. I can see the specter of a half-breed 
 despot, the first American emperor. In your folly 
 you have demolished the bars between citizenship 
 and the negro. You have shattered the strong 
 hold of racial prejudice. 
 
 " In Germany, the Colonial Society has peti 
 tioned the government to exclude from citizenship 
 the children of mixed marriages in the colonies. 
 There is tragedy in such severity. The Booker 
 T. Washingtons may have to suffer. Better for 
 them had they never been born. An intelligent 
 negro, like the child prodigy, is a monster. The 
 negro, like woman, is incapable of self-govern 
 ment. He is inferior even to woman. 
 
 ' We Aryans are the appointed masters of the 
 world. God has made the white race the guar 
 dian of His holy fire. We must cast out the half- 
 breed from the sanctuary. There is only one sal 
 vation for you. And even that cannot altogether
 
 192 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 save you from deterioration. Call upon Europe 
 for aid. Throw open your gates to all the peoples 
 of the earth who are your kindred. Widen the 
 gulf between black and white. Even encourage 
 dissipation among the negroes. The end justifies 
 the means. 
 
 " Keep out the Mongol lest he conspire with 
 the African. Asia is your enemy. Her unctuous 
 grin conceals the fury of her hate. She is most 
 your enemy when most she loves you. Let her 
 not drag down your sons and daughters into the 
 slime of her ancient corruption. Let her meet you 
 in deadly combat rather than in deadlier embrace. 
 Let her sons fight your sons, not furnish your 
 daughters with husbands. 
 
 ;t We Germans want to keep our people where 
 they are. We know that blood and muscle are 
 precious. We actually do import German peas 
 ants from Russia. We do not want them to go 
 to you. But for your own sake, I tell you not 
 to restrict immigration. The restriction of im 
 migration is national suicide." 
 
 There was something strangely prophetic in this 
 man. For the moment I was under the spell of 
 his extraordinary prediction. But when I set foot 
 again in America I was infected anew with the 
 indomitable optimism that has been our salvation 
 in the past and may be our doom in the future. 
 
 Again he spoke, and again I was inclined to dis 
 pute his views.
 
 WE AND EUROPE 193 
 
 " There is still another danger the greatest." 
 
 "The trusts?" 
 
 " Yes, the greatest of all trusts the most ancient 
 monopoly. Are you freedom-loving Americans 
 purblind ? Don't you notice the web of the spider ? 
 Don't you see him circling about you ? Have you 
 no intimation of the peril that will be the end of 
 your liberty, and hamper your feet in the onward 
 march of the nations? " 
 
 "What can that be?' 
 
 His eyes gleamed more strangely than ever. 
 He tossed back his hair and I saw the forehead 
 furrowed with thought and care. 
 
 " I mean the Roman Catholic Church. The 
 prelates at Rome openly proclaim among them 
 selves that the Church must regain in the New 
 World what she has lost in the Old. Don't you 
 feel the tentacles tightening? Don't you notice 
 the growth of the Catholic sentiment? Before 
 long Roman Catholics will be elected to high 
 offices. Finally, the presidency itself will be in the 
 grasp of the Church." 
 
 " I do not share your antipathy to the Church," 
 I interrupted. " Catholics are good citizens. I 
 believe in tolerance for all. I do not believe that 
 the Church will ever exercise great political in 
 fluence in America. The arm of the Pope is 
 long, but it cannot effectually reach across the 
 sea." 
 
 " Perhaps. But the Pope himself may cross
 
 194 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 the sea. The Papacy in Italy is doomed. Fugi 
 tive popes in the past have fled to France. Whither 
 should the Holy Father flee to-day? I have posi 
 tive knowledge that the Inner Circle of the gov 
 ernment of the Church have outlined a campaign 
 that will enable the Pope, if occasion arises, to- 
 establish his power and rear the throne of St. 
 Peter on American soil. In the shadow of that 
 throne your freedom will perish." 
 
 I was stunned for the moment. If any man 
 but this man had spoken, I would have laughed 
 in his face. Was he a maniac? Was he a proph 
 et? Or both? I can only repeat what he said, 
 as I reiterated it to myself later when, bewildered 
 but still impressed by his curious and insist 
 ent mentality, I strode through the streets of 
 Berlin. 
 
 We expect life to run perpetually unruffled. We 
 are inclined to regard as deranged those whose 
 vision is clearer than ours. The world has always 
 crucified its saviors and prophets. The cataclysms 
 of history seem logical and inevitable to impartial 
 posterity. They are utterly surprising to those 
 whom the clash destroys. The unknown force that 
 makes playthings of nations and gods, mercifully 
 strikes us with blindness. 
 
 A dozen anxious questions rushed to the tip of 
 my tongue, but before I had time to marshal my 
 thoughts, a uniformed attendant interrupted us a 
 second time.
 
 WE AND EUROPE 195 
 
 " His Royal Highness," I heard him whisper, 
 " has been waiting for several minutes." 
 
 Half skeptically, half perplexed, I kowtowed, 
 and left the field to the Royal Highness.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 I AND AMERICA 
 
 MY German friends tell me I am extremely 
 American. They mean to imply that I am not 
 an idealist. I admit that I have a bank account, 
 and that, in many ways, I am a Barbarian. Like 
 most celebrated Americans, I am really a self-made 
 man. Let me here throw light on the obscurest 
 chapter of my autobiography. 
 
 Soon after we had arrived in this country, my 
 father, having seen the bankruptcy of the intellect 
 abroad, determined that I was to be a son 
 of the soil. I was given into the care of a Balti 
 more florist, and earned at least my " keep " at 
 the age of twelve. In the morning I went to 
 town with chrysanthemums, roses and smilax; and 
 there was an old lady who bought my flowers from 
 me and always gave me a tip. I was very thank 
 ful for that tip. I recently found a letter of mine 
 written to my father, in those Baltimore days, 
 in which I informed him that twenty-five cents a 
 week pocket-money would place me on a sound 
 financial basis. 
 
 When the day's toil was done, I devoted my 
 196
 
 I AND AMERICA 197 
 
 leisure hours to a libretto entitled A Rustic Don 
 Juan, and to a novel, Eleanore, the Autobigraphy 
 of a Degenerate Woman. My boss, fortunately 
 or unfortunately, was also a poet. For a brief 
 space we lived in Arcadia. But when, instead of 
 nursing the flowers, we nursed our admiration for 
 each other, business began to languish, and a fran 
 tic appeal from the florist's wife compelled my 
 father to take me back. 
 
 I was now apprenticed to a florist in New York 
 City at five or six dollars a week. I ran errands, 
 and wrote a poem to the proprietor's wife. I 
 am afraid I was somewhat of a nuisance. I didn't 
 know the difference between East and West. I 
 took bouquets to impossible places. I was in 
 ordinately proud of some verses of mine that had 
 managed to creep into print. I had been engaged 
 at Christmas. After the holidays I was dis 
 charged. I think they still owe me three dollars 
 half a week's wages. Some day I shall try 
 to collect them. 
 
 My father at last relaxed in his grim determina 
 tion, and I was once more a schoolboy. When, 
 two years later, I graduated from a Public School, 
 I was the valedictorian. And ever after, like all 
 other valedictorians, I have been perfectly useless. 
 My ignorance is as many-sided as it is profound. 
 Owing to our many changes of residence, my 
 schooling has been frequently interrupted. There 
 are curious gaps in my education. I can't punc-
 
 198 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 tuate, spell, sing, or draw. I am blissfully igno 
 rant of grammar, geography and arithmetic. I 
 was absent from school the day we had the mul 
 tiplication table. God alone knows how I drifted 
 through college. 
 
 In Europe I would have been regarded as a 
 youthful prodigy. That might have made me 
 conceited. In America, we expect youth to take 
 upon its shoulders the work of the world. Europe 
 heeds the voice of graybeards. She is also fas 
 cinated by bluebeards. But a beard, it seems, is 
 absolutely essential. If I lived abroad, I would 
 still be dependent upon my father. Thus, a law 
 yer I met in Berlin referred to himself as a " young 
 man of forty," and still counted every week upon 
 the paternal allowance. But he possessed s avoir 
 faire. He was a matchless dancer and a witty 
 table companion. Socially, no doubt, the Euro 
 peans are our superiors. 
 
 I did not meet many Americans abroad. I let 
 the American Colony severely alone. There are 
 eighty million Americans in the New World. 
 There will be more presently. I did not go abroad 
 to add new exemplars to my collection. Of 
 course, I never called on my fellow-passengers. 
 I met three of them the two little girls with their 
 mother, the Hen on the street. I understand 
 they are doing exceedingly well. But the girl with 
 the pathetic eyes has fulfilled my prediction. She 
 was the only American victim of a railroad acci-
 
 I AND AMERICA 199 
 
 dent on the Mockernbrucke in Berlin. Her 
 bright small voice is hushed forever. The alien 
 mould has encompassed her little limbs. 
 
 Still, good people, dry your tears. Like Lion, 
 in a Midsummer Night's Dream, I am, in reality, 
 a " gentle beast of good conscience." As far as 
 I know, the lady is still alive. But for the purpose 
 of this book it was essential to kill her. I had 
 prophesied evil things for her, and it would have 
 been crudely inartistic to let the loose strands of my 
 story dangle irritatingly before the eyes of the 
 reader. Nero set a city on fire for the sake of a 
 beautiful phrase. Why should not I, to soothe 
 my artistic conscience, dispatch one hapless girl? 
 
 The distance between America and Europe, I 
 believe, is three thousand miles. But the distance 
 between Europe and America is three thousand 
 years. News from home seems to travel with the 
 exasperating slowness of an invalid centipede. 
 The cable merely whets the appetite without ap 
 peasing the hunger. The Paris edition of the 
 New York Herald is principally devoted to local 
 gossip. There are two or three publications in 
 English. I grasped at them as a drowning man 
 at a straw. But it happened to be the straw that 
 broke the camel's back. The camel of my pa 
 tience rose on its hind legs. 
 
 It was in the whirl of the Presidential cam 
 paign. But when I tearfully asked for the bread 
 of information, Europe presented me with a stone.
 
 200 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 A vague feeling of dissatisfaction, like malaria, 
 invaded my blood. The nudities of Olga Des 
 mond were powerless to charm me. The glitter 
 ing uniforms of the soldiers had lost their glamor 
 for me. I became increasingly conscious of the 
 distance that divided me from the Western world. 
 Like a secret mouse, patriotism, nimble-toothed, 
 nibbled away at my heart. 
 
 Then came election night, with its delirious and 
 delightful uncertainties. The earlier part of the 
 evening I spent at the house of Ludwig Max 
 Goldberger. The Consul-General and his charm 
 ing wife were among the guests. The atmosphere 
 was surcharged with passionate interest in things 
 American. But the city without was lulled in 
 slumber. Never the sound of a rattle, nor the 
 cadenced "Extry!" of the newsboys! I pic 
 tured to myself the crowds surging in waves be 
 fore those bulletin boards in my far-away Nineveh. 
 I was one with them. I was carried away by 
 their emotional frenzy. And my excitement af 
 fected the others. Telepathically the emotion of 
 those millions vibrated through our brains. We 
 yelled with them, not indeed with our throats, but 
 with our immortal souls. 
 
 Our gathering broke up comparatively early. 
 Special cable reports of the election think of it, 
 enviable American in Akron, O. ! special cable 
 reports would be read at the Adlon. So ran the 
 announcement that lifted us heavenward as Jupiter
 
 I AND AMERICA 201 
 
 transported Europa upon his horns. A throng 
 of Americans had assembled in the palatial vesti 
 bule of the German Waldorf-Astoria. How I 
 loved to listen to their speculations 1 How sweet 
 the resiliency of those nasal twangs. They were 
 my own people! This, for one night, was 
 home! 
 
 It was about twelve o'clock at night, five hours 
 later than in New York. The polls had hardly 
 been closed for two hours. With exasperating 
 slowness the news trickled through the bed of the 
 ocean. But, of course, the returns were very 
 meager for several hours. Newspaper opinion 
 had been so effectively manipulated in the preced 
 ing months, that we in Europe were blindly fum 
 bling and grumbling for facts in the general con 
 fusion. 
 
 Quietly amidst the excited throng the Ambassa 
 dor of the United States sat back in his chair, 
 chatting. David Jayne Hill is the most popular 
 ambassador in the capital of the Kaiser. From 
 the first, Berlin has treated Hill with the con 
 sideration that one bestows on a guest who has 
 been inadvertently wounded. What in the be 
 ginning was courtesy has crystallized into habit. 
 Hill's personal fascination has captivated the Ger 
 mans. The Americans likewise adore him. His 
 simplicity is in itself distinction. Instead of as 
 suming a comic opera uniform that provokes the 
 ridicule of the cognoscenti, he appears even at
 
 202 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 functions of state in the unostentatious apparel of 
 any other American gentleman. 
 
 There was a time when ambassadors were but 
 the mouthpieces of the sovereigns who made them. 
 To-day the ambassador is the spokesman of the 
 people he serves. The ambassador of to-morrow 
 will be the poet bearing forward the torch of his 
 people's genius. Even to-day the most important 
 embassies are placed in the hands of men of lit 
 erary attainment. James Bryce and M. Jusserand 
 are distinguished men of letters. Count Bern- 
 storff, the German Ambassador in Washington, 
 is a brilliant speaker. When I first met Dr. Hill, 
 I knew him to be the author of several philosophi 
 cal works, but I did not know that I was partially 
 indebted to him for whatever graces of style I 
 may possess. I had no idea that the man clothed 
 with the sovereignty of the United States was the 
 author of my old college text-book Hill's Rhet 
 oric. 
 
 Between three and four o'clock in the morning 
 we knew that Bryan had been .overwhelmed by the 
 usual landslide. There was general rejoicing. 
 The proprietor of the Adlon spoke a word of 
 command, and champagne rained like manna. An 
 unseen band began to play " My Country, 'Tis of 
 Thee," and the rhythm of the music blended with 
 the beat of my heart. It is quite probable that 
 there was no band. My recollections of the rest 
 of the evening are obscured by a roseate haze.
 
 I AND AMERICA 203 
 
 That night I was unfaithful to Europe. My 
 heart longed for America fiercely, as the cannibal 
 yearns for his peculiar diet. Madame Europe, 
 you are very wonderful, though in your youth you 
 were a goose and fell in love with a bull. Colum 
 bia is very naive, I admit, but there is a certain 
 charm in her inexperience. I admire your knowl 
 edge, Madame. There is fascination in your lips, 
 painted, and salt with sophistication. But some 
 times I am chilled by the feeling that perhaps 
 you are merely an old coquette. I wonder whether 
 your ideals, too, are not powder and paint. There 
 is a cynical twist in your smile that exasperates 
 me beyond endurance. 
 
 We, I think, are more genuine, after all. We 
 imagine we are sophisticated, but that is a fond 
 delusion. Columbia is like a squaw who insists 
 on wearing beauty plasters all over her face. Such 
 artificialities, Madame Europe, are becoming to 
 you. They enhance the fascination of a rococo 
 lady. They are ludicrous on the face of the 
 squaw. But we shall get over those things. We 
 shall be frankly Barbarian. The Middle Ages 
 have not bequeathed their wisdom to us; neither 
 have they left us their folly. 
 
 Our common sense is refreshing. There is the 
 Father of our Country. I have made fun of him 
 once in a while. Yet I admire George Washing 
 ton. I take off my hat to him. Everybody can 
 die for his country. It takes a higher courage to
 
 204 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 run away for it. George Washington ran away 
 for eight years. Think of the superb legs of 
 George running through the swamps of New Jer 
 sey! If Washington had been a European he 
 would not have run away. He would have died 
 for his country and we might still be an English 
 province. 
 
 Yes, Madame, I repeat, you are very wonder 
 ful; and you eat truffles for breakfast. But one 
 tires of truffles. Oatmeal is more conducive to 
 health. And not every one who delights in truffles 
 is a gourmet. It is a taste that the gourmet and 
 the hog have in common. And, Madame, I beg 
 your pardon, not all your lovers are gourmets. 
 But they are all weary with world-wisdom. 
 They suffer from mental indigestion. Our in 
 digestion is due to mince pie. Your stomach 
 balks at Nietzsche and Stirner. Besides, you 
 are very ungrateful. Vainly your Hauptmanns 
 and Sudermanns perform intellectual acrobatics. 
 Hardly a smile responds from lips eternally 
 bored. You are a child of the spouse of Mar 
 cus Aurelius: 
 
 // one should love you with real love, 
 Such things have been . . . 
 
 You'd give him, poison, shall we say? 
 Or what, Faustine?
 
 I AND AMERICA 205 
 
 You are fascinating, but be wise. Madame, I 
 counsel you : put not your faith in striplings. The 
 white magic of virginity defeats the black magic 
 of Circe. Thinking it over, I shall not keep house 
 with you, Madame. Somehow, after all, my heart 
 goes out to Columbia. The cynical smile around 
 your cruel mouth deepens. I know what it in 
 sinuates. The roue, you say, delights in the se 
 duction of innocence. But I am not a roue. Not 
 mine the loathsome emotion of Verlaine in that 
 most morbid sonnet ever penned by the hand of 
 man. 
 
 I shall not corrupt America. I am myself un- 
 corrupted at heart. I have passed through fires 
 of sin, but they have not singed a hair of my 
 head. Mine shall be the nobler pleasure of im 
 parting knowledge. And I shall teach Columbia 
 what you have taught me. I shall not teach her 
 all. Of course, people who marry to uplift their 
 wives invariably get the worst of it. It is quite 
 possible that America will vulgarize me. But 
 at least my gifts, whatever they may be, shall be 
 thrown into the crucible of the future. Perhaps 
 they are needed in the miraculous transformation. 
 
 There was a time when I wavered between two 
 literatures. I consulted with friends on both sides 
 of the ocean, and it was finally agreed upon that 
 America, being poorer than Europe, needed me 
 more. I decided to become an American classic.
 
 206 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
 
 I voluntarily deserted the company of Baudelaire 
 and of Heine, for that of Longfellow and Whit- 
 tier. 
 
 I will not pose as a martyr. It really wasn't 
 a matter of choice with me. I can't help being 
 an American. I am a son of this soil. What 
 ever I am, America has made me. My feelings 
 for her are deeper than gratitude. Like all deep 
 things, like love and faith, they are instinctive. 
 But I am not sentimental. I am like the lover 
 who is not blind to the faults of his mistress. I 
 hate and I love her. 
 
 I was never comfortable abroad. I sometimes 
 seem to myself a chameleon an inverted one. I 
 always assume a color at variance with my en 
 vironment. There was an ever tangible barrier 
 between Europe and me. The memory of home 
 severed us like a sword. I never knew how dearly 
 I loved the New World until late one night, when 
 the steamer glided into port. New York beck 
 oned to me, glorious and golden in barbaric splen 
 dor. Like a city wrought in fire she arose ! Like 
 a Titan woman of Baudelaire she drew me upon 
 her bosom. 
 
 And I, remembering my entry into Berlin, now 
 seemed to myself like a young Barbarian who, 
 having escaped unscathed from the Siren City, has 
 returned to his pristine love. Marvelous tales 
 he tells her, and circles her breasts with strange 
 jewels. And only sometimes in the night when,
 
 I AND AMERICA 207 
 
 listless and uncomprehending, she slumbers beside 
 him, his thoughts wander back to perfumed women 
 with painted lips and wise, far away beyond the 
 watery hills. 
 
 THE END
 
 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGION 
 
 ,, IIIM Mlll I|M| gun ^lu 
 
 A 000 940 861 
 
 ! THE WHITE HOUSE 
 WHAUWEIUSCOM,:/