Germany and the Germans from an American Point of ViewCollier, Price
History
Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View
Collier, Price
Germany; National characteristics, German
The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gambling; the Englishman
refuses to recognize the existence of any of the three. The German
does not understand the Englishman's point of view in these matters,
which is that, though he knows these things to exist, and that he is
no better in actual practice than other men, he refuses to accept
these as his ideal. He denounces and passes judgment upon, and
punishes men and women, who go too far in their appreciation and
practice of apolausticism as a philosophy of life. He might have run
away from danger himself, but he none the less scorns the man who did
so. The shipwreck, the fire, the test of moral courage and endurance,
may have found him a coward, or weak, or a deserter, but he holds that
he must none the less measure the coward, the weakling, and the
deserter, not by his own possible weakness if put to the same tests,
but by his ideal of a courageous and straightforward Englishman. I
agree with him wholly and heartily. If our sympathy is to go out on
every occasion, to the man who failed to come up to the mark of noble
manhood, just because we feel that we might under like circumstances
have failed too, then we give up the code of honor altogether, and our
ideals droop to the level from which we fight and pray to be
preserved.
We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the failure, upon the man who
has not mastered his life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard
to do, it looks as though one were without pity and without sympathy.
Not so; it is because we have great sympathy, and I hope unending
pity, and a growing charity, and constant willingness to lend a hand;
but to condone failure is to commit the selfish and unpardonable
cowardice of not judging another that you may not be forced to judge
yourself too harshly. That is far from being hypocrisy. Indeed, in
these days it is one of the hardest things to do, so fast are we
levelling down socially and politically and even morally. It looks
like an assumption of superiority when, God knows, it is only a
timorous attempt on our part not to lose our grip on the ideals that
help to keep us out of the dust and the mud. But he who lets others
off lightly in order that he may not be thought to have too high a
standard himself, or because he fears that he may one day fail
himself, such a one is the coward of cowards, the candidate for the
lowest place in hell; and well he deserves it, for he helps to lower
the standard of manhood, and he tarnishes the shield of honor of the
whole race. Let them call us hypocrites till they strangle doing so,
for when we lower our standards because we fear that we cannot live up
to them ourselves, all will be lost. To be mild with other men,
because we distrust ourselves, is a poisonous sympathy that rots away
the life of him who receives it, and of him who gives it, and ends in
a slobbering charity which must finally protect itself by tyranny and
cruelty. Not infrequently in dealing with individuals and with subject
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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