We have not overcome this habit of slapdash comparative criticism, for only the other day a distinguished American inventor left Berlin with these words as his final message: "We have nothing to learn from Germany." But in the nineteenth century, where does the American of sober intelligence, if Lincoln be omitted, find a match for Bismarck as a statesman, Heine as a wit and song-writer, Wagner, Brahms, and Beethoven as musicians, Goethe as a man of letters and poet, the still living influence of Lessing and Winckelmann as critics, Fichte as a scholarly patriot, Hegel and Kant as philosophers, von Humboldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, Bunsen, and Haeckel as scientists, Moltke and Roon as soldiers, Ranke and Mommsen as historians, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Sudermann, Freytag, "Fritz" Reuter, and Hauptmann as novelists and dramatists, Krupp and Borsig as manufacturers, and the Rothschilds as bankers? Lincoln, Lee, Sherman, Jackson, and Grant may equal these men in their own departments, but aside from them our only superiority, and a very questionable superiority it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff- incubated millionaires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we may learn and profit by the superiority of others. These explanations that I have given, historical, political, external, and internal, offer reasons worth pondering both why we do not understand Germany's huge armament and why Germany looks upon it as a necessity. However much the expenditure on fleet and army may be disguised, the burden is colossal. In the year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, for purposes of defence, for army and navy and all other military purposes whatsoever including pensions, amounted to 452,000,000 marks; in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks; in 1898, to 882,000,000 marks; and in 1908, to 1,481,000,000 marks. The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908 were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only 254,000,000 marks out of the grand total of 1,735,000,000 were spent for other than military purposes. As the army and navy now stand at a peace strength of some 700,000 men, and as these men are all in the prime of their working power, the loss in wages and in productive work may be put very conservatively at 600,000,000 marks, which brings the cost of the support of the military establishment of Germany up to 2,000,000,000 marks and more per annum, or $500,000,000. Many Americans were dismayed when our total national expenditure reached the $1,000,000,000 point, and the Congress voting this expenditure was nicknamed the "Billion-dollar Congress." What would we say of an expenditure of half a billion dollars for defence alone! With what admiration, too, must we regard 65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully the burden, each year, of half our total national expenditure, merely on the military and naval barricade which enables them to toil in peace and security.