Bismarck knew these people and the present Emperor knows these people, better than do you and I! Bismarck even insisted upon using the German text, and once returned a letter of congratulation from an official body because it was written in the Latin text. Even the Great Elector must have recognized this weakness when he said: "Gedenke dass du bist em Deutscher!" The present Kaiser lends his whole social influence to keep the Germans German. He will have the bill of fare in German, he prefers the dreadful word Mundtuch to napkin. His officers very often demand that the bill of fare in a German hotel shall be presented to them in German and not in French. And they are quite right to do so, and quite right to hang the German world with the sign "Verboten"; quite right to distribute titles and medals and orders, for the more they are uniformed and decorated and ticketed and drilled, and taken care of, the better they like it, and the more contented these people are. Overorganization has brought this about. Their theories have hardened into a veritable imprisonment of the will. They have drifted away from Goethe's wise saying: "That man alone attains to life and freedom who daily has to conquer them anew." Let me refer again just here to the socialist propaganda, which seems to the outsider so strong here in Germany. Even this is far flabbier than it looks, as I have attempted to explain elsewhere. In such strong and out-and-out industrial centres as Essen, Duisburg-Muehlheim, Saarbruecken, and Bochum, where a vigorous fight has been made against socialism, the following are the figures of the last election in 1912 when the socialists largely increased their vote throughout other parts of Germany: NATIONALLIBERAL ZENTRUM SOCIALDEMOKRAT Essen............ 25,937 42,832 40,503 Duisburg-Muehlheim 33,934 31,559 34,187 Saarbruecken...... 25,108 24,228 4,157 Bochum........... 42,257 37,650 64,833 I cite this example because it seems as though the growth of socialism in Germany were in direct contradiction to my argument that they are a soft, an impressionable, an amenable, and easily led and governed people. State socialism as thus far put into practice in Germany is, in a nutshell, the decision on the part of the state or the rulers that the individual is not competent to spend his own money, to choose his own calling, to use his own time as he will, or to provide himself for his own future and for the various emergencies of life. And by the minute state control, they are rapidly bringing the whole population to an enfeebled social and political condition, where they can do nothing for themselves.